It is a rainy day, and on rainy days staff in Coolmine Community School in my constituency, Dublin West, have to set out between 40 and 50 plastic buckets across the school to deal with water flowing into corridors, classrooms, toilets and offices. That water flows from over 100 leaks in the roof of the school. Coolmine is a big school, with almost a thousand pupils, and has provided top-class education for students across Dublin 15 for decades. It is, however, an old school. The building is now over 50 years old and is literally falling apart. I have known this school well over many years and have had the opportunity to visit it twice in the past six months. On the second occasion, it was raining and I saw a teacher trying to divert a rivulet of water coming in through a classroom ceiling away from the electrics for the white screen in that classroom. That is thousands of euro worth of damage risked in just one classroom, and the same thing is happening all across the school. Beyond the health and safety concerns to which these conditions give rise, there is the disruption to education whereby teachers are distracted by having to manage the inflow of water, and, in particular, the disruption to the normal, everyday activities of the school. Almost 1,000 students walk the corridors of the school every 40 minutes, and they literally have to navigate an obstacle course between all the buckets on the floors. TDs come in here and overstate matters. I am not overstating this. Each of the corridors has five, six or seven buckets laid across it just to collect the water. The school's management team, the principal and deputy principals, has been proactive and submitted an emergency works application for the roof in November. That is application No. 3484. They got a visit from the Department's emergency works team in March. The Department thought about it and then asked the school for a full survey. That full survey is in and now the school is waiting to hear back from the Department in terms of the outcome. The roof is still leaking. Leaving certificate examinations are taking place today, but someone is probably putting out buckets in Coolmine right now. The school has complied with all the Department's requests for documentation and has followed all the procedures for emergency works applications. This is on the Department. The Department has not met its timelines in terms of the responses it has given to the school management team. The state of the roof in Coolmine is known to the Department and to the Minister, Deputy McEntee. The Minister visited the school in February of this year. She contacted me earlier. I know she cannot be here to address this matter directly, and I appreciate her contacting me. I hope the Minister of State, Deputy O'Sullivan, has some good news for the students in Coolmine, the teachers, the other staff and the parents. I do not want to hear about lengthy assessments. I do not want to hear that the school has a load of follow-ups to bring through. I do not want to hear about the school having to go back to a previous contractor. I want the Minister of State to confirm to me that the school's emergency works application, No. 3484, has been granted and that it will have the opportunity to go rapidly to tender, get this work done, or as much of it as can be done, over the summer holidays, and be ready for students coming back in September.

I thank Deputy O'Gorman for raising this issue. He has painted a pretty bleak picture of the conditions at Coolmine school, which, as he stated, is quite a large school of 1,000 pupils. It is very concerning and disappointing in this day and age, when we have seen the level of investment in education and in capital works in particular, that a secondary school is experiencing that level of leakage. I can see Deputy O'Gorman is going through his copy of my response. Unfortunately, I do not have an official confirmation in terms of a grant, but hopefully I can give him an update as to where the grant stands. I can confirm that the Department of Education and Youth is in receipt of a current application from the school for funding under the emergency works scheme for roof works, namely to replace the roof due to water ingress issues. The purpose of the emergency works scheme is to provide funding specifically for unforeseen emergencies or to provide funding to facilitate inclusion and access for pupils with special needs. It does so by ensuring the availability of funding for urgent works to those schools that are in need of resources as a result of an emergency situation. An emergency is deemed to be a situation which poses an immediate risk to health, life, property or the environment which is sudden, unforeseen and requires immediate action and, in the case of a school, if not corrected would prevent the school or part thereof from opening. The emergency works scheme operates on the basis of a minimal scope of works required to address the emergency situation. The scheme is intended to remedy an emergency situation and usually provides an interim measure until a permanent solution can be delivered under the summer works scheme, which deals with upgrade works to schools. The original application proposed a scope of works seeking to replace the entire roof, which would be deemed an upgrade and not a minimal scope of works. Owing to the relatively recent installation of the roof in question, the school was advised to revert to the original design team to remedy the situation in the first instance. The original contractor repaired the three original leaks on foot of a leak detection test carried out in 2022. However, the condition of the roof had deteriorated further since the time of that test and water ingress issues persisted, as the Deputy has outlined. On 19 March 2025, the Department Education and Youth conducted a site visit to assess the issues at play. The Department advised the school to obtain a new leak detection test. This report was received by the Department in the past two weeks and is undergoing technical review. Once this review has been completed, the emergency works team will engage with the principal of the school in respect of next steps. As the Deputy may be aware, the Minister recently announced details of the climate action summer works scheme for 2026 onwards. The purpose of this scheme is to devolve funding to individual school authorities to undertake small-scale building works which ideally can be carried out during the summer months or at other times that avoid disrupting the operation of the school. The scheme will operate on a multi-annual basis for a number of categories, which could include the provision or upgrade of roofs. The new scheme opened for applications in early May 2025 and all applications must be received by this Department by 5.30 p.m. on 30 June 2025, when the applications window will close. Full details of the new scheme, including the circular and guidance documents for schools, can be found on the Department's website. To come back to the immediacy of the Deputy's question and the urgency of the turnaround of the application that is with the Department, the report in terms of the new leak detection test was received in the past two weeks. That is a short enough window of time. I ask that the Deputy give the Department time to assess that report. I understand the urgency of a decision, especially when the leaving certificate is going on. I suppose the Deputy wants some type of affirmation that at least by the time we go back to school in September there will not be that level of leakage. I will stress the urgency of that to the Minister.

I thank the Minister of State for his response. The line, "The Department advised the school to obtain a new leak detection test", when there are a hundred buckets on the floor, is worthy of "Yes Minister". The school put in an application for an upgrade because it does need a new roof. It was then told, "No, you cannot go under that pathway; you have to go for an emergency works pathway." The school has now done that, which is why this delay has occurred. The Minister of State has told me in detail about the climate action summer works scheme. That is a great scheme - it is fantastic - but that is not relevant here because this is not a matter of energy saving or climate action; it is a matter of the roof leaking in a hundred places. I do not feel that this issue is being addressed by the Department with the urgency that is required. I probably should have said earlier that I sat on the board of management of this school for about four and a half years, during which time it undertook some work on the roof. It was a massive job. Work of this nature means that classrooms are not available because of the noise and disturbance caused. Summer is the ideal time to do this work. If we are waiting for the Department to make up its mind, it has not even indicated that it will make up its mind. It will go back and tell the principal the next steps. If we eventually get a positive outcome from the Department, it is not looking like this will be decided any time soon. There is a bigger question about Coolmine and the need to do a complete rebuild. The building is more than 50 years old. It has been a great school but it is not fit for purpose for 1,000 students. This is something that I and other Deputies will raise with the Minister in the future. However, right now, I cannot stress enough the urgency of the Department coming back and getting an answer to the emergency works application by the school to allow this to proceed. I ask the Minister of State to press this with the Minister and the Department of Education and Youth.

Yes, I will press this. There is also an opportunity for schools to apply for the climate action summer works scheme, although perhaps it does not apply to Coolmine. The emergency works scheme is obviously the right one. I take the Deputy's point about buckets. All we have to do is look at the number of buckets that are gathering water at the moment to discover that there are leaks there. The leak detection test may highlight the exact seriousness of the problem and how much work is involved. It is not good enough in this day and age. There has been record investment in education on the capital side. New schools are being built and additional classrooms provided. There is a lot of construction work going on across the board. The fact that a school that educates more than 1,000 pupils is in this condition is very hard to stand over. I will press it with the Minister. I am hopeful for the Deputy and the students and parents that we will get a positive outcome on this. I will stress the urgency of it and I will come back to the Deputy as soon as I have any feedback.

It is more than 6 km from Kildare town to the Curragh Camp. No matter what road is taken, and even the motorway can be taken, there are no footpaths. The majority of the three or four routes are winding country roads, with little visibility and a lot of danger for anyone who might want to walk them. I will come back to this. I want to discuss Curragh Community College. This is, and has always been, a fine school, but its time is coming to an end. Even the wonderful principal and the board of management say that the school is not fit for purpose. At present, there are a lot of dangers in the school. This school also has its buckets and its fire dangers, as has previously been discussed. I want to raise the issue of the need for a school bus from Kildare town to the Curragh for the next couple of years. Why I am raising this is that, thankfully, after a ten-year wait, a new secondary school, which will have the name of the Curragh Community College, is to be built in Kildare town. Planning permission was obtained this year and it is proceeding, according to replies I have received from the Minister for Education and Youth. There will be 300 students going from Kildare town, the Curragh and the surrounding areas to the Curragh Community College this September. The problem is that a lot of the students coming from Kildare town have no way of getting there. Many of their parents have been carpooling but that causes problems as well. As I said earlier, there are no footpaths on the roads leading to the college. A new school is being built in Kildare town. Many of the pupils who will attend the school are already living in Kildare town. When the new school is built, students from The Plains, Melitta Road and other estates in the area will have to walk 200 yards to the new school. However, they are currently 6 km away. They have come to me and other public representatives in Kildare South and we have asked the Department to put on a school bus route in the interim while the new school is being built. Lo and behold, the reply we got was that the pupils were not going to their nearest school. How can they go to their nearest school? At the moment, the school that is there, Kildare Town Community School, is oversubscribed. The only option for many new students in Kildare town is to attend the Curragh Community College. This is the conundrum. This is the only possibility for them to get a secondary education. As I said, within two to three years, or however long the new building takes, they will be able to walk the 200 or 300 yards on safe footpaths to the new school. However, in the interim, they have been told that they are not attending their nearest school. I hope the Minister of State will have some good news for me. I ask him to provide a bus service for those students for the next two to three years so that the parents and the new pupils attending the Curragh Community College can actually get to the school for those couple of years while we wait for the new school building. I hope that the Department sees sense on this. It is a very sensible request by the parents of children attending the Curragh Community College.

I am responding on behalf of the Minister of State, Deputy Michael Moynihan, who has the privilege of taking over the issue of school transport, which he is absolutely delighted about. He is very reasonable and I know that he will give this consideration. On the Minister of State's behalf, I welcome the opportunity to respond on this matter. The school transport scheme is a significant operation managed by Bus Éireann on behalf of the Department of Education and Youth. Bus Éireann has advised that children residing in Kildare town are not eligible for the Curragh Community College as they are not attending their nearest post-primary school centre. They further advise that there is no existing service from Kildare town to this school. In cases where families have applied to attend their nearest schools with regard to ethos and language, and have been advised by the school authorities that these schools are full, the Department will consider if the pupil is eligible for the next nearest school. While the closest schools may be full to capacity at present, each family must supply evidence that an application for enrolment was made within the deadline specified by the schools and a letter from each of the school authorities confirming that the school was full. This information should be submitted to the school transport section of the Department of Education and Youth for consideration. Contact details for the section can be found on the Department’s website. As the Deputy may be aware, a minimum of ten eligible children residing in a distinct locality, as determined by Bus Éireann, who have applied and paid or entered their medical card details, are required, before consideration may be given to the establishment or retention of school transport services, provided this can be done within reasonable cost limits. The Bus Éireann family portal has now closed for applications and payments. Bus Éireann will now assess all applications and payments received and plan for routes and services for the 2025-2026 school year. Routes may be altered or extended depending on the number and location of eligible children who will be availing of school transport for the following school year. Once routes have been finalised, Bus Éireann will assign tickets for each school transport service. Tickets will begin to issue in mid-July and will continue to issue during July and August. Families who are unsuccessful in obtaining a seat will be notified via email and a refund will issue. Payments or medical card details submitted after the deadline date will be deemed to be late. A late submission of payment or medical card details may mean that a seat is not available. There is a job of work in terms of the Department assessing the levels of interest and applications that have come in. There is the specification requirement of ten eligible students to establish a route. I take the Deputy's point regarding this specific case in the Kildare town and the Curragh. It is great for Kildare town that the new Curragh school will be built there. Perhaps a solution should be considered in the interim. The Minister of State's door is open. If there needs to be a workaround or some type of interim solution, he will at least discuss this with the Deputy and work with the Department on it. I have set out the requirements for establishing new school bus routes.

The good news is that at the moment we have 20 pupils, double Bus Éireann's requirement. There are potentially another 12 students so 32 students could avail of this. These students are residing in Kildare town, some of them less than 500 yards away from the site of the very welcome, proposed new school that will be built over the next two to three years. That will accommodate 1,000 pupils. At the moment, almost 300 students are attending the Curragh Community College. I take on board what the Minister of State has said and I will reach out to the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, again. We have the names. Some of the pupils and families are into their second or third year of trying to get this bus service. The numbers seem to suggest they have enough to request a bus under the guidelines the Minister of State referred to tonight and which I received previously from Bus Éireann. I hope common sense will prevail. This is an interim, short-term measure. We will prevent a number of cars travelling those 6 km if we can put on a school bus for those potentially 30 students. I will contact the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, again to ask him to reconsider. I will provide the names and everything the Minister of State has given me tonight. I ask the Minister of State to have a word with the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, to say exactly as I have said tonight, that this is a distinct possibility. I agree with the Minister of State that this is a special case. I have spoken before about special school buses. It is a yearly topic for me but this needs to happen for many people who will enjoy a purpose-built school less than 500 yards from their homes but it will not happen for two to three years. I hope the Department sees sense and provides that school transport.

I spoke in jest about the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, taking on the brief of school transport. He is very experienced in this. He has been around the block, was a backbencher for a while and battled in similar situations to the one the Deputy has presented. He understands the need for that but there are parameters and guidelines he has to work within. The requirement is for ten eligible students. One could present a case for 100 concessionary students. It is about whether that would suffice for establishing a new route. That will have to be worked out. Because it is an interim solution and many students will eventually go to the newly built school in Kildare, perhaps that is an angle that could be worked on. It is for the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, and his Department to assess it. I would absolutely say the Deputy should build a case and bring it to him in terms of the numbers and demand that would be there for such a service. I thank the Deputy again for bringing this to the House.

I am sure the Minister of State is aware of the Department's plan to redesignate special schools so they no longer cater for children and students with mild learning disabilities. This will apply to approximately 30 schools across the country. I understand, in part, the rationale behind it. The Minister wants an inclusive model of education where children with mild learning disabilities can go to a mainstream school, and that will free up places in special schools for children with more complex needs. However, as is often the case with policies, there are unintended consequences and when you look on the ground, you see the policy does not fit and is not the right policy. I bring the Minister of State's attention to a school in Bray in my constituency, New Court special school. It is a fabulous school. When you walk into it, there is a feeling of love, happiness and support. It has around 80 children, some with complex needs, but previously it primarily focused on children with mild learning disabilities. It provides a loving but individualised care and education model for the children. The children really thrived in that environment. Unfortunately, with these plans those children with mild learning disabilities will no longer be able to go to New Court and will have to go to their local mainstream school. Many of these children were in mainstream schools, could not thrive there and therefore ended up in New Court. Also, I just do not think the one-size-fits-all model will work. I am worried for these children who find it difficult to keep up with the pace of a mainstream class. If they are put in to a mainstream school, are trying to keep up with their peers and are unable to do it, the stress, anxiety and not feeling part of the school will make life very difficult for them. Maybe it would work for some children but we need to look at the children's needs and ensure that we find a school environment that suits them and that there is choice for them and their families. I know there are many children with complex needs who cannot get school places. That is a scandal we have seen happen year after year. However, we need to ensure those children are accommodated and children with mild learning disabilities are also accommodated and get special education if they require it. Rather than displacing one set of children with disabilities with another set of children with disabilities, we need to provide spaces for all these children in the settings best suited to them. The schools in my area have 1,000 students in them. I cannot imagine how difficult it would be for a child with a mild learning difficulty to go in and settle and fit into that kind of environment. It would be incredibly difficult. New Court is a school in my area so I am raising it but my colleague, Deputy Jen Cummins, has been raising the wider policy issue. I hope there is an opportunity for some flexibility in the policy.

I thank the Deputy. Her description of the special school in Bray mirrors my experience of visiting special schools in Cork and elsewhere. I have seen the improvements in these children's education, ability to cope and mental health. What they are able to do is incredible, especially when they have access to additional therapies. That is another part of what we are trying to do. I take that point but my understanding is the intention of the redesignation is not to narrow the scope but to broaden it in terms of who can be catered for in the schools. I will explain more in this response. The Government is committed to the provision of additional special school places for children with more complex educational needs. Over 300 new special school places are being provided for the 2025-26 school year. Five new special schools are being established in addition to the 11 new special schools opened over the last few years. Special school capacity is also being expanded across a number of special schools. Along with providing additional special school capacity, the Department of Education and Youth and the National Council for Special Education, NCSE, consider that it is necessary to look at the profile of existing special schools. It is important to state that it is not the intention to exclude children who require a special school place from accessing certain special school settings, but instead to work to ensure children with complex educational needs can apply to their local special school. There are situations currently arising where children with additional needs travel past special schools in their locality to attend a special school further away. This is not fair on the children or their families. It is down to the fact children cannot apply for admission to their local special school simply because they do not meet the narrow designation of that special school. It is important to state that there is no strict timeline on redesignation being pursued. As indicated in Circular 0039/2025 published in recent weeks, the Department and the NCSE intend to commence work in this area in the coming school year. Any change to designation will proceed on a gradual phased basis and schools will be supported with training, supports and guidance by the NCSE. This is not a new departure. The NCSE reports that over half of these mild general learning disability special schools have since diversified, which means children with more complex needs can enrol in their local special school. A lot of work has been done by these schools to broaden their designation and the Department of Education and Youth will continue to support schools in this endeavour so that more special schools can better support children with complex needs in their local community. Of the 129 special schools nationwide, approximately 30 were originally designated as schools for children with mild general learning disabilities. One of these is in County Wicklow and has just over 100 students enrolled. I take the Deputy's point. It is not a one-size-fits-all. We all know of cases of children with mild learning disabilities who, you would think, might be more appropriately educated in a mainstream school, but it just does not fit. We have seen where they have excelled and done much better when they attend the special schools. I take that point. I do not think that is the intention of what is being done here. The intention is to cater for those children with more severe learning disabilities, stopping them from having to pass their local school and go further afield because their existing special school is at full capacity. That is the intention here. This is being rolled out on a phased basis and there is a lot of work to be done.

My understanding is that children with mild learning disabilities will not be able to enrol in any special schools under this programme because they will not have the sign-off, approval or letter of eligibility from the NCSE. The plan is for all of those children to go to their local mainstream school. I absolutely agree that no child should have to travel for two hours to get to their special school or to get education. It is absolutely not acceptable. Every child should be able to be educated within the local community. We should increase the capacity of the special schools, rather than just moving children from a special school into a mainstream school and then putting other children into the special school. It is more of a displacement than an inclusion process. I do not know what level of conversation or consultation has been done with the mainstream schools. I imagine it would be very difficult for mainstream schools to get the level of support needed to assist and help these children. These children will not be going into any of the autistic spectrum disorder, ASD, units or anything like that. They will be going straight into mainstream classes, but they will need supports. We have not seen in the policy or heard in any of the discussions how we are going to make sure those secondary schools have the actual supports they need. How are we going to make sure they have enough places? I am still dealing with children who do not have a school place for the coming September. Our educational welfare officer has disappeared and will not be back until September. There are children who still do not have a place in a mainstream school in the north Wicklow area for September. The mainstream schools in our area do not have capacity. I do not know where these children are going to go. Wherever they go, we need to make sure they have the supports they require. I ask the Minister of State to revise this and meet some of the schools.

I thank the Deputy for raising the question and for giving me the opportunity to reassure the House that the Department of Education and Youth and the NCSE are committed to ensuring all children can access an education suitable to their needs. The Department of Education and Youth continues to engage intensely with the NCSE on forward planning for new special provision to ensure every child has a place in an educational setting best fitted for their educational need. It is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Where a special school is deemed more appropriate, the options are being kept open in that regard. The establishment of mild general learning disability, MGLD, special schools predated the significant expansion in the range of supports offered in mainstream schools through additional special education, teaching and special needs assistant resources, and through the rapid expansion in special class provision. There are now over 28,000 children being supported in special schools and classes, with the number of special classes increasing by 103% since 2020. Examining the designation of special schools is not about limiting the options of any child; it is about creating options and ensuring that children with more complex needs are afforded the opportunity to attend their school with other local children. This means there will be a variety of different needs accommodated in the school, not just children with one particular need. In my previous response I made the point that the NCSE reports that over half of these mild general learning disability special schools have since diversified. Diversification is the key word. It is about ensuring that these schools that previously only catered for children with mild general learning disabilities will now cater for more. That is key. Deputy Whitmore mentioned the level of consultation. The Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, is in the office next to me. He has spent a lot of time and is dedicated to consulting with the special schools but consulting with parents as well, which is really important. That is something that has happened. I am very sure I can stand over that statement with a fair degree of confidence. I totally accept the points raised and I will relate what was said here back to the Minister of State.

This is not a Topical Issue that I wanted to bring to the Dáil but it relates is an ongoing situation over a number of months. I am disappointed it had to get to this point. It is very clear that six months after Storm Bert and Storm Darragh, and five months after Storm Éowyn, there is no plan from the Government on how to deal with the infrastructural deficit that has had a huge impact across Connemara. I totally understand that we could not have anticipated the impact Storm Éowyn was going to have. The problem for people across Connemara is it was not something new. Storm Bert and Storm Darragh had a serious impact on that whole area. After Storm Darragh there were people without phone coverage and broadband for weeks, with limited, if any, contact from their network providers. What has the Government done in terms of engagement and direct contact with these companies recently? This is an ongoing issue. Has there been any accountability? What kind of accountability can the Government actually give? The problem is that since Storm Éowyn there have been consistent power outages, even in May and June. I regularly hear on Raidió na Gaeltachta and from constituents about people who have no power for 12 hours at a time during the summer months. There have been consistent power outages. One woman who lives in the Ballyconneely area contacted me this week. Her power has gone ten times since October. It is not just her electricity; her water is impacted because the pump needs power to operate. She has no water when there is a power outage. It has happened ten times since October. After Storm Éowyn there were clear calls for generators to be put in place at those water pumps. Does the Minister of State know what the story is with that? Obviously, people being without water is a serious issue. That kind of thing cannot continue. A family who live outside Oughterard, which is not far from Galway City, were in touch with me. They were 95 days without a phone line after Storm Éowyn. The most shocking of all was an email I got from a woman last Friday. She is trying to help her elderly neighbour. This man lives alone in a very rural part of Connemara and his phone line has only worked for three weeks since last November. The phone is a lifeline for somebody like that. We are talking about people who have panic buttons not being able to use the panic button or a phone. She told me there are six houses on the road and an awful lot of elderly people living on that road, and their panic buttons are not working. She said on that same road during Storm Éowyn they had the following experience. The Minister of State will remember that in parts of Connemara TETRA was not working and one could not ring 999. Among these six houses there was a woman who needed an ambulance and oxygen. Her neighbours had to travel to get a mobile phone signal so they could ring an ambulance. These really serious issues continue to affect an awful lot of people across Connemara but there does not seem to be any plan in place to fix them. Nobody expects it to happen overnight; it is clear there are basic infrastructural deficits. There does not seem to be a plan of action coming from the Government, however. We also have health centres that are still losing their phone lines. If a health centre does not have a phone line, there is no way of contacting the hospital or an ambulance in the case of a health emergency. At the time of Storm Éowyn there was a call for generators for these health centres and also for the provision of satellite phones.

The Deputy raised some specifics regarding the generator, phone outages, etc. I will endeavour to get the Department to come back to her on those points. The written response I have is quite lengthy. I hope it will set out the plan and answer the Deputy's questions. I hope she has time to get to it. With regard to the national development plan, in early April the Government agreed to commence the review process. Following this, my Department wrote to Departments to advise on the Government's approach to improving our infrastructure through the review. As outlined in the programme for Government, energy is a critical priority for investment, alongside housing, water, transport and health digitalisation. The core focus of the review will be to ensure that supporting economic infrastructure can be prioritised to support the delivery of 300,000 additional homes and to boost our competitiveness. I now move on to grid investment. Electricity is vital in daily life and customers need a dependable network to meet current and future needs. This is why investing in the network is key, investing for today and for the future. The Commission for Regulation of Utilities, CRU, as an independent regulator, sanctions investment in the onshore electricity grid in five year cycles. More than €4 billion investment in the onshore electricity grid was approved for 2021 to 2025. Accelerating delivery of that investment is a priority for this Government and we have a working group under the accelerating renewable electricity task force tasked with doing just that. Regarding planned grid investment from 2026 to 2030, work has commenced on Price Review 6 which will see the CRU sanction the investment in the grid to 2030. A public consultation is expected from CRU by the end of June on its proposals under PR6. This will see major investment in the onshore electricity grid and represents a step change in grid development and investment, a process which will see further progressive scaling during the 2030s to meet future targets. These investments will start to deliver the building blocks on which we will expand our onshore grid out to 2050. The large-scale investment sought as part of PR6 will assist Ireland in maintaining a reliable and resilient electricity network to meet the needs of customers and society. This investment will deliver additional network capacity at all voltage levels, as well as allowing for significant investment in asset maintenance and replacement and measures to improve continuity of supply. Government supports all efforts to maximise the level of grid investment in 2026 to 2030 as part of the PR6 review and any further support sought through the NDP will be actively considered. To deal with the disruptive events of storms and long-term impacts of climate change, as part of Price Review 6, ESB Networks is planning to implement a strategic approach to asset management to ensure that the investments are future-proofed and resilient. ESB Networks will also be part of a mutual association called NEWSAC, the North, East, West, South Area Consortium, which is composed of the electricity companies in Ireland and the UK. These companies provide mutual aid to support each other in the aftermath of storms. On 5 February, Cabinet requested that ESB Networks develop an Enhanced Winter 2025 Grid Resilience Plan as a key measure to be implemented in the lead up to winter 2025. The plan is to enhance the resilience of the grid in the most vulnerable locations for the upcoming winter. The ESB Networks Winter 2025 Grid Resilience Plan sets out actions across several key areas. These include the removal of hazards, post-storm inspection of the electricity network, forestry management, replenishment and expansion of stocks of materials and spares, and resourcing and innovation measures that will build resilience in the electricity network for the winter ahead. Ensuring the climate resilience of communication networks in the immediate term and in preparation for longer-term climate changes is a complex task which will require targeted investment. However, given the liberalised and privatised nature of the communication sector across both fixed and mobile networks, it is primarily for network operators to make the necessary investment to improve their networks’ resilience. Storm Éowyn has drawn attention to the current readiness of networks to withstand severe weather events. The major cause of service outages in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn was the result of cascading impacts mainly emanating from the lack of electricity. I have a further response and will come back in.

Yes, the Minister of State was getting to the most interesting part there. I am happy with this response because I feel like something is being taken seriously. I understand the Minister of State is not over this particular Department but I will ask him to bring back a few things and also for a number of clarifications on this. There are a few interesting things. At the end of the day, I do not want this to continue happening in Connemara so I welcome anything that can be done and any kind of plan that can be put in place, especially given the vulnerability of people when they cannot contact their local health centre or the ambulance. The Minister of State said that given the liberalised and privatised nature of the communication sector across both fixed and mobile networks, it is primarily for network operators to make the necessary investment to improve their networks’ resilience. The problem for an awful lot of people is they contact their network provider but it is doing absolutely nothing. What can we do to hold these network providers to account or get them to put that investment in? I am not sure that investment will happen and that is a key issue of concern for me. Then the Minister of State referred to the need for power backup for mobile and fixed networks being informed by a prioritisation exercise, for both network assets and services, as well as the potential for other types of networks to temporally fill a service void, and the example given is using satellite services to provide emergency cover. Can we make sure those satellite services are in the health centres? Will the Minister of State bring that point back to the Minister and to the Department? Regarding the prioritisation exercise and another mention of prioritisation in the Minister of State's response, can we make sure in those most vulnerable areas that we are looking at updating the vulnerable customer list? That was an issue during Storm Éowyn. It was not really working. Can we also look at those areas that are really behind in that sense? I will make one quick last point. The Minister of State stated that the average duration of power outage experienced in Ireland is usually far shorter and far less widespread. The problem is in Connemara it is too regular an occurrence.

As Deputy Farrell rightly points out, I was just getting into the relevant section on Storm Éowyn so I will come back to that. As I was saying, the major cause of service outages in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn was the result of cascading impacts mainly emanating from the lack of electricity supply to power the network communication networks. Communication networks themselves suffered more limited direct damage. Loss of power was the key issue to cause loss of communication services in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn. As electronic communication networks and services are, by their very design, reliant on power at every component. The ESB Networks 2025 plan sets out the preparation for winter 2025 in the event of another storm such as Éowyn. Storm Éowyn did stand out on its own. I know the Deputy referenced other storms but this was peak in terms of previous experiences from an Irish context. There is some good stuff in the grid reliance plan such as removal of hazards, post-storm inspection of the electricity network, forestry management, replenishment and expansion of stock of materials and spares, and resourcing and innovation measures that will build resilience. However, the Deputy has also brought up some good points such as backup generation, rolling out those hubs that were very effective and these are points I will bring back to the Minister.