Carol Nolan (Offaly, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am glad to get the opportunity to speak on this motion. I am aware that many people are yet to receive a response to applications they submitted under the humanitarian assistance scheme. I am engaging with the Department to see how this process might be escalated given that it is now almost two months since the storm. Last month, I submitted a number of parliamentary questions to the Minister on behalf of a number of people who had received a payment under stages 1 and 2 of the humanitarian assistance scheme, asking whether additional resources would be allocated given the scale of need. I did this after I was contacted by a constituent who informed me he had applied for the scheme after his family was left with power and heating for over three days. All the food in the family's fridge and freezer was spoiled and their only source of hot food was to eat from takeaways. They had no heating other than a portable gas fire which was moved from room to room to heat the house. Because of all of the food that was wasted and the purchase of takeaway food and bottles of gas to try to heat some of the house, the family decided to apply for the humanitarian aid scheme as the father was in receipt of a social welfare payment. They received a reply to inform them that they had been awarded the measly sum of just €15 to cover the extra costs for a family of four. It was put to me that this amount would not even cover the VAT rate on the costs they had incurred. This is totally unacceptable and needs to be revisited.

This motion calls on the Government to provide clarity as to the duration of the scheme's application window, to expand the humanitarian assistance scheme to businesses and farmers and to ensure a thorough and timely fulfilment of reviews submitted by scheme applicants who have been refused or have not been satisfied with the amount awarded to them. I agree with those calls, which is why I will support the motion. These are reasonable demands, notwithstanding the often unreasonable nature of the party proposing them.

Speaking more generally, the political impact of the recent storm has been to blow the roof off the carefully constructed narrative that Ireland's major infrastructural deficits are a thing of the past. Even allowing for the storm being a relatively rare nature event, it was an international embarrassment to see the country crippled by such extensive damage to its electricity, telecoms and water infrastructure. I commend the communities who worked together to get through it, the many who made their community centres available and the Eir workers.

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