Joe Flaherty (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

.Like many other speakers, I will reference the fallout from the storm. We have a large concentration of rural representatives in the House and it is only we who can really voice the anger in the aftermath of the storm about the unpreparedness. It manifested across the country. There is a lot of anger and annoyance, particularly among families of elderly people who were left isolated and of youngsters who were trying to study for exams and could not. The reality is that we will have these events and the catastrophic impact of storms again further down the line. I already wrote to the Taoiseach to recommend we convene a special committee to look at what happened in the storm, how we were so unprepared for it and what actions we need to take. We did something similar for the Covid-19 pandemic and we responded with emergency powers. We need to do the same in relation to the storm.

One specific fallout from it was the area of forestry. I was on the agriculture committee under the last Government and one of the most vexatious issues during the lifetime of that committee was forestry, the challenges for people who had invested in it and trying to get licences. Then overnight we had an unprecedented storm that has wiped out several plantations. If that sector came into this Government in a crisis, it has now plunged into a deeper one. We need the Minister for agriculture to come to the House to discuss what emergency powers we will give to the agriculture sector to safeguard the people who made those investments so that prices do not plummet and they are not taken advantage of by producers.