Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South-West, Fianna Fail)

As Deputy Farrell rightly points out, I was just getting into the relevant section on Storm Éowyn so I will come back to that. As I was saying, the major cause of service outages in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn was the result of cascading impacts mainly emanating from the lack of electricity supply to power the network communication networks. Communication networks themselves suffered more limited direct damage. Loss of power was the key issue to cause loss of communication services in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn. As electronic communication networks and services are, by their very design, reliant on power at every component. The ESB Networks 2025 plan sets out the preparation for winter 2025 in the event of another storm such as Éowyn. Storm Éowyn did stand out on its own. I know the Deputy referenced other storms but this was peak in terms of previous experiences from an Irish context. There is some good stuff in the grid reliance plan such as removal of hazards, post-storm inspection of the electricity network, forestry management, replenishment and expansion of stock of materials and spares, and resourcing and innovation measures that will build resilience. However, the Deputy has also brought up some good points such as backup generation, rolling out those hubs that were very effective and these are points I will bring back to the Minister.

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