Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this motion. We need to learn many lessons from Storm Éowyn. We can blame and give out, but we need to be prepared for the next one and do a post mortem on what needs to be improved. In fairness, the Minister, Deputy Calleary, has been helpful whenever I have gone to him. I would say his Department has no closing date in its letters. You need flexibility for all people because they came through a terrible time. Telling someone to apply online when there is no Internet connection is stupid. I am not saying the Minister did it but the Department said that. I ask the Minister to ask his Department to be flexible with people. I know there are many applications to be gone through yet. If people applied for the wrong thing or filled in the wrong thing, the Department should make sure there is the opportunity to go back and guide them. I commend the Minister on helping us with the few that I brought to him. I will be straight up about that.

We need to learn many lessons. I see Senator Scahill in the Gallery. Regarding phones around the country, including in his county and every county in the west, up towards Cavan, and the whole area that got hit, even though Eir is out on the road fixing things at the moment, someone needs to hold it to account. If I am supplying a service to someone as a contractor, I have to supply it. The phone companies are sending bills to people. What about the people who have an alarm around their neck and are left high and dry? That is not good enough. It is not a Government matter but the companies need to be whipped and the Commission for Communications Regulation should wake up, to be frank about it, because it seems to be in the dark. It should be giving them harsh penalties for the service companies are giving, because it is not acceptable in any world. It would be fine if it was a week or two but the ESB was able to cover half the country. It brought in resources and made an effort. You have to commend it. It has lessons to learn but, in fairness, it got the power back. The wires are still in trouble.

One thing that worries me is we had a meeting with the ESB. You also hear this if talking to the communications crowd. There is no sense of learning that trees caused most of this problem, including, first of all, forestry. Our Department is still giving licences to plant near the road and the lines. A distance of 30 m to either side of a wire should be completely clear, because no one should ever have to go through the torture that people went through. The first thing that needs to be done is for the ESB to stand up and, if it says legislation is needed, it should be done. Letters are going round from people who wrote to the councils about trees. People wrote to the Department of the environment, and it said how this is a matter for the ESB and everyone else, but the problem is that it was a matter for everyone up to now and we see the problem. We have to make sure we learn from this and we do not let it happen again. Where there are trees on the side of the road, I do not care what forestry it might be. It should be 30 m from the road because these trees are growing 30 m high. That is the end of story, with no ifs or buts about it. If people lose out on that, they lose out on it. You can pay them for the ground but they will not have trees on it. That is the way it should be.

Where wires go through forestry or anywhere else, I would be all for planting two smaller trees down in the field or wherever to make up the difference. I am not saying we should leave the country treeless. We need to make sure we consider the costs entailed. If you analyse where trees caused a problem compared with where poles broke in other situations, the ratio is 100:1. That is the fact. If you can eliminate 99% of the problems and reduce them to 1%, you will not have too many losing power.

I welcome the Minister, Deputy Heydon's announcement about generators. I know under TAMS he is doing something with the roofs of sheds. I would have liked if that was happening now because there were weanlings and cows in sheds looking up at the sky at night to see the stars. It would be helpful if that was given now. He has committed to giving it in the coming months, which I welcome. That is a step in the right direction.

I ask Deputy Calleary, as Minister for rural affairs, as we have mentioned before, to look at the likes of community centres to create hubs. Be it a small village or a bigger place, I ask the Minister to create a hub so that if a doctor needs to set up or there are people without food who need to cook in it, there is a facility in all those areas and it works. I ask the Minister and his Department of Rural and Community Development to look into that and to try to get it over the line. People need light and heat. I am a firm believer that many people get sick during the year who are not on this so-called list which the ESB has.

We need some joined-up thinking between everyone to make sure there is a possibility people get generators when they are sick. I have seen people who have a hospital bed and all of that. It is not that a gigantic generator is needed, but it needs to be set up with the plug ready to be put in. These are little things. If a group worked together from different perspectives, be they telecoms, the ESB, the Department of agriculture for the farmers' side of it, doctors from the medical side of it and communities, which are at the heart of it all, to bring up ideas, we could learn and if we got a storm next winter or in a hundred winters' time, we would know what we were doing.

The other issue, which was touched on, is that of small businesses. They were out of action for a good while and have got damn all support. All we hear is that they were not looking for it. The poor divils were trying to keep the lights on and the doors open. I ask that they be recognised for the effort they made. Some small businesses were out of action for a good while. The Minister will know, as he comes from such an area, that small rural shops and pubs are giving a service to their areas. It is not for the money they are making, my God. It is because it is a place of well-being on many a night for people where they will say hello to someone they might not have seen all day.

This is not having a go at the Minister. It is about learning how to make it better for everyone, no matter where the storm is. If it is down in the south of the country, or in the east or north, we know what it is to get a devastating storm. We are only trying to give the ideas, so that we work together to try to drive it forward, and are ever-ready when it comes again. That is all I have to say.

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