Christopher O'Sullivan (Cork South-West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome Deputy Devlin and assure his Ukrainian guests that they are in good hands today. Our thoughts are with them on the third anniversary.

I thank Senators for their kind words of welcome. This is my first time addressing the Seanad and I really appreciate the kind welcome. I have listened to the debate and engagement which has been really interesting, particularly the contributions of Senators from the areas that were worst impacted. Down in west Cork, thankfully, for a change we did not get hit by the brunt of it but I know that areas right across Galway, the midlands and the north west were devastated so it was important to hear that feedback.

I am glad that the issue of climate change and climate breakdown was brought up by Senators Harmon, Stephenson and Higgins because it is important that we understand the source of this and why it is happening. I tend to agree with Senator Higgins in terms of the approach to trees along roadsides. The ESB has it within its gift, and within the law, to act where it sees that trees may impact power lines or may present a safety concern. However, I do not agree that we should just devastate our roadsides and chop down every tree along them because, as Senator Higgins quite rightly pointed out, there are not that many areas of woodland left in Ireland and in some places the only ones left are along roadsides so there has to be a balanced approach.

Senator Rabbitte spoke about Galway and the devastation there. She is correct to say that we need a standardised approach to who can use chainsaws. What I loved about the experience was that there was a cross-local authority response with staff and crews from other local authorities helping those that were worst impacted. We saw a crew from Finglas, for example, go all the way to Cavan to help there. That is something that we need to see more of.

I disagree with many of Senator Scahill's criticisms of the response but certainly in the areas of broadband and communications we absolutely could have and should have done better. There are certainly lessons to be learned there. Senator Comyn made an interesting point about the deaths during the night of the big wind. A lot of this is related to the fact that these early warning systems do work. If we did not have those systems in place, we would have had further loss of life, unfortunately. To pick up on the Senator's point, back in those days we did not have the early warning systems or the preparation that we have now. Senator Goldsboro's idea of extending the housing adaptation grant scheme to include generators certainly has merit and is something that I will speak further about with the Minister of State, Deputy Cummins.

We hear the terms "once in a lifetime" and "unprecedented" quite a lot but in many ways this storm was just so. We have never before seen the wind speeds that were experienced off the west coast. We have never seen such a number of houses without power. It was twice the previous record. It is very hard to prepare for experiences like this but I appreciate that there must be learning. We must learn from this and prepare because we know that such events are going to become more regular.

In terms of the main response, there are systems and plans in place to manage severe weather and other incidents and to co-ordinate a whole-of-government response. They have been used successfully before and they work. These well-rehearsed response measures that were in place and were utilised made for an effective cross-sectoral and cross-government collaboration that fully supported the immense efforts of all of the local authorities, the principal response agencies, the Defence Forces and all utilities. I must also mention the hospital staff who slept in on Thursday night in order to be there for patients. I also commend the rapid response by local authorities, ESB Networks, Uisce Éireann and others, following Storm Éowyn. This response, supported by the Defence Forces, Government agencies, the Civil Defence, and voluntary emergency services working with community volunteers, NGOs and community organisations, is an example of the collaborative approach we have in place to ensure a rapid response during such events. The task of maintaining power and water supplies as well as telecommunication services - the critical infrastructure on which society depends - falls to the critical infrastructure operators. These organisations are core partners in the emergency management sphere and attend the national emergency co-ordination group along with their respective parent Departments, where their assessment of the threat, as well as their situation reports on damage and restoration efforts are key points of information. Once the threat to life from Storm Éowyn had passed, all efforts of the national emergency co-ordination group were focused on supporting ESB Networks and Uisce Éireann to restore power and water supplies. While the vast majority of the country is reconnected to power and water and has connectivity, the Government is conscious that no one should be left behind and that some are still experiencing connectivity disruptions. Accordingly, a cross-departmental recovery group has been established and will continue the work of the national emergency co-ordination group to co-ordinate intensive efforts to restore telecommunications and broadband connectivity to those who continue to experience outages.

As is the case with all severe storms, following the conclusion of the response, all aspects of the State's response will be fully reviewed with a view to identifying the key lessons across all sectors and the implementation of recommendations. This will include a continuing focus on planning for such events, business continuity management and building resilience and readiness across all sectors. My Government colleague, the Minister for environment, climate and communications, Deputy O'Brien, met representatives from the CRU, ESB and ESB Networks on 31 January to discuss the Storm Éowyn response, the impact on customers, immediate actions to increase the resilience of the electricity grid and planned grid enhancements to the end of 2030. Following on from this meeting, specific energy related actions have been prioritised to be delivered once the initial storm response has been completed. These include an enhanced winter 2025 grid resilience plan, a full review by ESB Networks and by the CRU of the planned grid enhancement and the priorities within the next five years. A final decision on the CRU strategic workforce plan 2025-2027 is to be taken by the end of quarter 1 of 2025. The Government has previously approved a €4 billion investment in the onshore electricity grid for 2021-2025. A baseline investment of €10.1 billion for 2026-2030 has been sought by ESB Networks and the onshore grid with scope to raise this to €13.4 billion. A final decision on this is expected from the CRU in 2025. This includes an increase in spending on asset management, underground cables and the replacement of ageing overhead lies and poles. ESB Networks plans to massively scale up its timber cutting programme.

Uisce Éireann is committed to protecting and future-proofing Ireland's water infrastructure. Although pre-emptive actions were taken with reservoir levels and 420 permanent and over 600 mobile generators were used to mitigate the impact of Storm Éowyn, they will have a post incident review providing opportunities for improvement and further resilience. As part of this review, Uisce Éireann will examine requirements for additional generators and alternative power solutions and will continue to work with all relevant Government Departments and State agencies to ensure enhanced levels of readiness for extreme weather events in future.

As previously stated, the Government continues to support those severely impacted, including individuals, families, communities, businesses, and sports clubs through the Department of Social Protection humanitarian assistance scheme. The programme for Government includes a commitment to develop an extreme weather event assistance scheme for homes, community organisations, farmers and businesses which will be brought forward as a matter of priority. To date, the community welfare service has issued more than 5,000 stage one payments, totalling almost €1 million, to people who, at the time their application was approved, did not have any power or water supply during Storm Éowyn. The service is working closely with local service directors in local authorities and community welfare officers are visiting people in their homes, where necessary, to provide support. The Department of Social Protection's community welfare service was also represented in the emergency response hub, set up by the local authorities.

The programme for Government commits to developing an extreme weather event assistance scheme for homes, community organisations, farmers, and businesses. Work on the development of this new scheme will commence as a matter of priority through the relevant senior officials' group.

The estimated effect of Storm Éowyn on telecom networks was the largest in ComReg recorded history. A significant number of outages experienced on the telecom networks were due to the lack of power to fixed and mobile infrastructure. While many key sites had battery back up to maintain services, once battery capacity was exhausted, some network areas would have experienced outages. The deployment of generators maintained connectivity at core sites across the country. At peak, over 281,000, or 10%, of fixed broadband customers were completely without services. Also, a peak of 2 million, or 35%, of mobile customers experienced some level of degradation of service. ComReg has monitored the situation and liaised with operators throughout Storm Éowyn and the repair operation, receiving regular reports on restoration of services and updating the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. Like all other sectors, telecommunications oversight and resilience will be reviewed as part of the overall review learnings for Storm Éowyn.

The Office of Emergency Planning has established a critical infrastructure committee to oversee the EU critical infrastructure resilience directive. The OEP has engaged with regulators and established national competent authorities to reinforce compliance with these new regulations across the public sector and semi-State organisations with an emphasis on cross cutting and integrated forward planning. This includes ESB Networks and Uisce Éireann to improve infrastructure resilience, regular reviews and updates to improve resilience measures and aligning preventative measures and resilience across all measures and key sectors.

We believe the Government's response was timely given the circumstances and every effort was made to minimise disruption to all those effected, to the greatest degree possible.