Aisling Dolan (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I want to continue the congratulations for Senator Burke, who is an amazing man from Mayo in the west. It is an honour because his is an amount of experience that we are fortunate to have in the House. We are very lucky to have Senator Burke with us today.

I congratulate Senator Carrigy on his work on the autism-friendly Parliament. I know that each of us partook of training and it is training that we should be doing in many sectors. I admit that to do that training gave a great insight into how we can engage, how to be aware and how to get rid of that unconsciousness and unawareness, which is really what training is about. I pay tribute to Senator Carrigy and everybody in the Oireachtas who worked to achieve that.

Between Storm Isha and Storm Jocelyn, there has been quite a lot of damage, particularly in the counties of Galway, Roscommon, Mayo and Donegal, and there have been many power outages. I thank the front-line teams, particularly those in ESB Networks, Electric Ireland and Irish Water, who have done Trojan work over the last two or three days. In my own town of Ballinasloe, many were without power yet it was back again that morning, if not working throughout the night, once the storm status of yellow, orange or red had changed. It is very difficult as the teams cannot go out when there is an alert, but once the alerts are finished, they are pretty much out there straight away. I want to acknowledge that because it was not an easy time, particularly with the two storms coming together. They tried to prioritise everything but businesses in particular, some of which were closed for two or three days. It is crucial that we have those front-line emergency teams out working on this. Go raibh míle maith agaibh.