Paraic Brady (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I compliment all the small shopkeepers, community centres and local businesses that gave credit to people who wished to purchase food when this crisis happened and the card machines went down. People are so dependent on card machines. Our local shopkeepers and businesses took out a little book and wrote in credit notes for people whereby they could purchase food. That has to be recognised.Not only did they give water, but they also gave food and credit to people, unlike some of our bigger stores which would not give people food unless they had cash in their pockets. This is the point I am making. I want to compliment our small business for what they have done. As others have said, we need to have a working area over and around ESB lines and our broadband network where we do not have trees. If this storm has taught us one thing, it is that the ash dieback situation in this country for the last number of years has not been dealt with. A lot of those trees brought down power lines. We discussed the Sitka spruce as regards our forests being flattened, but we must not forget all the ash trees that are still on the ground. Some of them that are not on the ground at the moment, because they have yet to suffer with ash dieback, will come down in future storms.

The ESB stated that the repair costs will be passed on to the consumer. We cannot accept that in this House or the Lower House, given the profits the ESB has shown for the last number of years. It has to bear that cost. It has to put in a service where it looks after its own lines. Where there is shrubbery or trees growing within a certain area that will take down these lines, it must bear the cost of removing them and managing its own power lines. We have asked farmers in ACRES to preserve the environment and everything else. The farmers in our local area came out and cleared roads for our local county council in local areas. I want to compliment our farming community because without them older people and others would not have been able to travel on our roads. In County Longford we have vast areas of forestry that have been flattened and roads closed. Our county council services - the workers on the ground - would not have gotten this cleared. A task force needs to be set up first of all. We need to have a database of what is available in every county - digger drivers, fellas that are qualified with chainsaws or farm relief, etc. - so that when something like this happens again in the future, we have a database of where to go, who is available and who is there to help. That is very important.

There was a loss of food in the storm. People saved up food and put it in fridges and freezers over the last number of years for a holy communion, for Christmas or for something else. Now, all of a sudden, all the food in those freezers has been dumped and gone to waste. Families are wondering who is going to compensate them for this and who is going to pay the burden. How are they going to restock all this? People have saved up over the last number of years by putting a bit of chicken, pork or fish in the fridge that they can take out to feed their families. There is a huge burden on them. I compliment the Minister for agriculture for making the TAMS grant available to all farmers, not only the dairy sector. There is a huge cost to the dairy sector in this, however. Farmers who were not able to milk cows and had to hire in generators, or who were not able to cool their tanks and had to dump the milk into septic tanks or slurry pits, did not get paid for it. There has been a huge cost to people in rural communities out of their own pockets all because of negligence in the ESB's service where we have not maintained or put enough into the infrastructure.

It is not a name and blame game. What I am saying is that we will get away with this because it has happened once. If this happens again and we see power outages for 14 or 15 days, people in the country will not and cannot accept it. We must learn and move on from this mistake. We must put steps in place so that it does not and should not happen again that the ESB is out for 14 or 15 days. As people have said in this Chamber, generators had to be brought in to keep up air mattresses for people who had bed sores and everything else. All I hope is that when people are getting generators, they are qualified to use them, and we do not put generators in houses that could result in carbon monoxide poisoning. A little bit of training and a little bit of thought needs to be put into this before we start handing out generators throughout the country willy-nilly.