Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)

Yes, the Minister of State was getting to the most interesting part there. I am happy with this response because I feel like something is being taken seriously. I understand the Minister of State is not over this particular Department but I will ask him to bring back a few things and also for a number of clarifications on this. There are a few interesting things. At the end of the day, I do not want this to continue happening in Connemara so I welcome anything that can be done and any kind of plan that can be put in place, especially given the vulnerability of people when they cannot contact their local health centre or the ambulance. The Minister of State said that given the liberalised and privatised nature of the communication sector across both fixed and mobile networks, it is primarily for network operators to make the necessary investment to improve their networks’ resilience. The problem for an awful lot of people is they contact their network provider but it is doing absolutely nothing. What can we do to hold these network providers to account or get them to put that investment in? I am not sure that investment will happen and that is a key issue of concern for me.

Then the Minister of State referred to the need for power backup for mobile and fixed networks being informed by a prioritisation exercise, for both network assets and services, as well as the potential for other types of networks to temporally fill a service void, and the example given is using satellite services to provide emergency cover. Can we make sure those satellite services are in the health centres? Will the Minister of State bring that point back to the Minister and to the Department? Regarding the prioritisation exercise and another mention of prioritisation in the Minister of State's response, can we make sure in those most vulnerable areas that we are looking at updating the vulnerable customer list? That was an issue during Storm Éowyn. It was not really working. Can we also look at those areas that are really behind in that sense?

I will make one quick last point. The Minister of State stated that the average duration of power outage experienced in Ireland is usually far shorter and far less widespread. The problem is in Connemara it is too regular an occurrence.

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