I add my voice of recognition and congratulation on the amazing work that has been done by so many people in responding to what has been a one-in-a-hundred-year event. In the first instance I want to recognise the staff of the ESB and the local authorities and the tremendous amount of voluntary effort that was put in. However, I throw in a word of caution to those seeking to jump on the bandwagon and trying to blame all of this on politicians and on the Government. There are 15 members of the Government. While there are those who are suggesting it is all their fault, quite a lot of people do not buy that game, quite frankly. It is a populist and popular thing to attack the Government but there are many people working behind the scenes in government. They are voters, too, by the way. They are in the local authorities and the ESB. They and their families see it as an attack on them. Let us be cautious and careful here. Let us recognise that we need to take a lot of learnings and have a lot of work to do to be better prepared in the future. That is not all down to a Minister, or two or three Ministers; it is down to many people. The people I have spoken about are angry and upset. They do not necessarily blame the Minister. They might say that to the Deputy opposite; that is a matter between him and them. They want the country to be better prepared and in a stronger position to address the crisis. We need to ensure that those hubs are better in place. It is an attack on the CEO of the local authority when the Deputy suggests that they are not in place. The funding is always there. With respect, the Deputy knows full well money is not an issue at the minute. It might be to the Deputy, but not to the local authorities. I visited locations the other day and met with staff in a local authority. They are not telling me that they did not respond because there was a shortage of money, quite frankly. They are working now to address this. There are issues about the clearing of ESB lines and of course we have to engage and interact with Coillte, but not just Coillte. I have heard Deputies jump on Coillte because that is an easy one. However, we should not forget that there are many private landholders who are responsible for forests. If they are suggesting that the responsibility lies on the owners of forests, they are putting a burden on small farmers who have small plantations and cannot afford it. A word of caution in their effort to blame the Government for everything: just be a bit more careful.
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I have seen it on social media. I have seen the attacks as if it is just a Government problem.
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I support what the previous-----
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Sometimes the truth when it is explained-----
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-----becomes difficult for the Deputy to explain, which is fine.
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Deputy Paul Lawless spoke about the need to have better planning for hubs in place. I know and Deputy O'Donoghue knows there were lots of generators in the mid-west and they were rolled out to homes that needed them - where there were vulnerable patients and they were needed for the purpose of electrical equipment.
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Quite frankly, I heard nobody thank anybody for that. I have seen a couple of politicians run around with one or two generators and they thought they had solved the crisis for everybody.
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Deputy Fitzmaurice's colleague indicated from Brussels that had there been 12 or 13 generators here a day earlier, the storm could be averted.
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That is the kind of stuff that goes on.
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I am here to work with others on what has been learned out of this, how we ensure that there is not a continuous situation where trees that can damage power lines are left in place and how we can better respond to the needs of people in terms of getting power back to them more quickly, and ensuring there are generators at all the Irish Water sites so that clean water is pumped to the sites. Those are all important. As the Taoiseach said earlier today, there was one life lost. That is one too many. This could have been catastrophic. It was not catastrophic because of the planning that was done and the direction that was given from central government in terms of recognising the state of the problem. I would like to think we could have a debate in a couple of weeks' time, when the Deputy will not be playing to the local media agenda or the deadlines of local newspapers. Maybe it could be done at committee, where we can be more reflective in putting in place a plan that will work. On those issues that the Deputy has identified and learned, let the Deputy be part of that too.
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