Victor Boyhan (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister for coming to the House and giving an overview of the response. It is his responsibility as Minister of State and chairman of the Government task force on emergency planning. He may have already done it but I would like to encourage the Minister of State to ensure local authorities are actually ready because in my experience few are. The first port of call for most people is the local authority. We have 31 local councils in the country but I can only speak for Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown where they now have a 24-hour emergency service, which is based in a call centre in Cork, although that is irrelevant. It is a good system in that the minute one dials this number, the call will be answered by an agency who will tell one where to connect. The reality is that local authorities need to be geared up. I was a member of a local authority for many years but councillors, the elected members, virtually knew nothing about the emergency response. There is a whole range of emergency responses - for example, responses to weather issues, issues to do with agriculture and maritime disasters. A myriad of issues could arise this very night. This is about a bigger response. If there is a weakness in local authorities and in the whole joined up thinking about emergency responses, how ready, how equipped and how resourced are each of the 31 local councils to meet a disaster this very night? This very night a major cruise ship could go down in the port of Dublin. Where would one get blankets, food and other resources? Have there been dry runs of emergency response teams? It is not as joined up as we would like to imagine. It is an issue for the new year. It is also an issue in terms of the competence of the local authorities working with the Defence Forces, An Garda Síochána and a range of State and voluntary agencies. How ready are we as a nation? How ready are local authorities and State agencies to respond to what could potentially be critical disasters for communities and for our people?

I thank the Minister of State for addressing this issue in the House. It is timely and appropriate. I acknowledge the staff and the team that are involved. We need to have some ongoing training in regard to immediate responses in emergencies. That is something that I ask the Minister of State to look at in conjunction with the Minister for Housing, Planning, Community and Local Government. How can we be sure that all State agencies and all local authorities are ready to respond immediately to a major disaster? The Minister of State will find great weaknesses in the system. It is not robust enough and needs to be looked at. I suggest that the Minister of State and his officials might look at it in the new year. Again, I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House and sharing his plans. Clearly, he has given it a lot of thought to it.