Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I will put this on record so people listening and following this will get an understanding of what we are talking about. "Unplanned" means nobody knows this would happen until it actually does, as opposed to planned outages. I note that in Kildare town and out towards Monasterevin and Ballykelly, people have experienced four unplanned outages in recent months. The first one was caused by farm machinery damaging a stay and bringing the conductor to the ground. I believe the second incident was caused by a contractor damaging a cable during earthworks. The third and fourth incidents were caused by small sections of the overhead wire looking weak and damaged and needing to be dealt with as an emergency. We also had a situation where up to 2,000 people were affected because an overhead line was hanging very low. It was deemed a danger and had to be dealt with in an unplanned manner. It had to be done now and not next week. Those are examples of what happens. ESB Networks does its best, but unfortunately sometimes things can happen. There needs to be provision made on an ongoing basis for those who need power for medical devices or working from home.