Maria McCormack (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will keep it local to Laois because many of the points have already been covered. In rural areas like Laois, power cuts do not just mean the lights go out. They mean that families lose access to heating, water pumps and vital medical equipment become unusable, and farmers struggle to feed or milk their livestock. Small businesses that are already under pressure lost trade and stock. We need to look at this more. I welcome the humanitarian assistance fund but it must be expanded to small businesses in our community.

Storms like Storm Éowyn are not rare freak events anymore. Climate change is making extreme weather more frequent and more severe. We need a plan that is proactive rather than reactive. Like Senator Craughwell, I call for a national resilience plan whereby we put investment into energy infrastructure in advance to make the grid more resilient, particularly in rural areas where the outages last longest. Too many businesses, schools and homes remained without power for far too long following Storm Éowyn. We were not lucky enough to have a community response hub in Laois. As others have mentioned, it would be great to have fully equipped backup generators in surrounding areas for vulnerable people who are left without heat, food or medical support. There should also be a fast-tracked compensation and support scheme. Although the humanitarian assistance fund was fantastic, it was slow and only available to homeowners. I again call for small businesses, especially in the communities that bore the brunt of this, to be added to this scheme.

I hope we can now plan for the future, learn from Storm Éowyn and put effective measures in place.