Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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This is not a Topical Issue that I wanted to bring to the Dáil but it relates is an ongoing situation over a number of months. I am disappointed it had to get to this point. It is very clear that six months after Storm Bert and Storm Darragh, and five months after Storm Éowyn, there is no plan from the Government on how to deal with the infrastructural deficit that has had a huge impact across Connemara. I totally understand that we could not have anticipated the impact Storm Éowyn was going to have. The problem for people across Connemara is it was not something new. Storm Bert and Storm Darragh had a serious impact on that whole area. After Storm Darragh there were people without phone coverage and broadband for weeks, with limited, if any, contact from their network providers. What has the Government done in terms of engagement and direct contact with these companies recently? This is an ongoing issue. Has there been any accountability? What kind of accountability can the Government actually give?

The problem is that since Storm Éowyn there have been consistent power outages, even in May and June. I regularly hear on Raidió na Gaeltachta and from constituents about people who have no power for 12 hours at a time during the summer months. There have been consistent power outages. One woman who lives in the Ballyconneely area contacted me this week. Her power has gone ten times since October. It is not just her electricity; her water is impacted because the pump needs power to operate. She has no water when there is a power outage. It has happened ten times since October. After Storm Éowyn there were clear calls for generators to be put in place at those water pumps. Does the Minister of State know what the story is with that? Obviously, people being without water is a serious issue. That kind of thing cannot continue.

A family who live outside Oughterard, which is not far from Galway City, were in touch with me. They were 95 days without a phone line after Storm Éowyn. The most shocking of all was an email I got from a woman last Friday. She is trying to help her elderly neighbour. This man lives alone in a very rural part of Connemara and his phone line has only worked for three weeks since last November. The phone is a lifeline for somebody like that. We are talking about people who have panic buttons not being able to use the panic button or a phone. She told me there are six houses on the road and an awful lot of elderly people living on that road, and their panic buttons are not working. She said on that same road during Storm Éowyn they had the following experience. The Minister of State will remember that in parts of Connemara TETRA was not working and one could not ring 999. Among these six houses there was a woman who needed an ambulance and oxygen. Her neighbours had to travel to get a mobile phone signal so they could ring an ambulance.

These really serious issues continue to affect an awful lot of people across Connemara but there does not seem to be any plan in place to fix them. Nobody expects it to happen overnight; it is clear there are basic infrastructural deficits. There does not seem to be a plan of action coming from the Government, however. We also have health centres that are still losing their phone lines. If a health centre does not have a phone line, there is no way of contacting the hospital or an ambulance in the case of a health emergency. At the time of Storm Éowyn there was a call for generators for these health centres and also for the provision of satellite phones.

Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South-West, Fianna Fail)
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The Deputy raised some specifics regarding the generator, phone outages, etc. I will endeavour to get the Department to come back to her on those points. The written response I have is quite lengthy. I hope it will set out the plan and answer the Deputy's questions. I hope she has time to get to it.

With regard to the national development plan, in early April the Government agreed to commence the review process. Following this, my Department wrote to Departments to advise on the Government's approach to improving our infrastructure through the review. As outlined in the programme for Government, energy is a critical priority for investment, alongside housing, water, transport and health digitalisation.

The core focus of the review will be to ensure that supporting economic infrastructure can be prioritised to support the delivery of 300,000 additional homes and to boost our competitiveness.

I now move on to grid investment. Electricity is vital in daily life and customers need a dependable network to meet current and future needs. This is why investing in the network is key, investing for today and for the future. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, as an independent regulator, sanctions investment in the onshore electricity grid in five year cycles. More than €4 billion investment in the onshore electricity grid was approved for 2021 to 2025. Accelerating delivery of that investment is a priority for this Government and we have a working group under the accelerating renewable electricity task force tasked with doing just that.

Regarding planned grid Investment from 2026 to 2030, work has commenced on Price Review 6 which will see the CRU sanction the investment in the grid to 2030. A public consultation is expected from CRU by the end of June on its proposals under PR6. This will see major investment in the onshore electricity grid and represents a step change in grid development and investment, a process which will see further progressive scaling during the 2030s to meet future targets. These investments will start to deliver the building blocks on which we will expand our onshore grid out to 2050. The large-scale investment sought as part of PR6 will assist Ireland in maintaining a reliable and resilient electricity network to meet the needs of customers and society. This investment will deliver additional network capacity at all voltage levels, as well as allowing for significant investment in asset maintenance and replacement and measures to improve continuity of supply. Government supports all efforts to maximise the level of grid investment in 2026 to 2030 as part of the PR6 review and any further support sought through the NDP will be actively considered.

To deal with the disruptive events of storms and long-term impacts of climate change, as part of price review 6, ESB Networks is planning to implement a strategic approach to asset management to ensure that the investments are future-proofed and resilient. ESB Networks will also be part of a mutual association called NEWSAC, the North, East, West, South Area Consortium, which is composed of the electricity companies in Ireland and the UK. These companies provide mutual aid to support each other in the aftermath of storms. On 5 February, Cabinet requested that ESB Networks develop an Enhanced Winter 2025 Grid Resilience Plan as a key measure to be implemented in the lead up to winter 2025. The plan is to enhance the resilience of the grid in the most vulnerable locations for the upcoming winter. The ESB Networks Winter 2025 Grid Resilience Plan sets out actions across several key areas. These include the removal of hazards, post-storm inspection of the electricity network, forestry management, replenishment and expansion of stocks of materials and spares, and resourcing and innovation measures that will build resilience in the electricity network for the winter ahead.

Ensuring the climate resilience of communication networks in the immediate term and in preparation for longer term climate changes is a complex task which will require targeted investment. However, 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. Storm Éowyn has drawn attention to the current readiness of networks to withstand severe weather events. 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. I have a further response and will come back in.

Mairéad Farrell (Galway West, Sinn Fein)
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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.

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