Last night, thousands of households across Connemara were without power again. There was a storm and lightning. No one is going to blame the Government for lightening or a storm by any stretch of the imagination. However, we have a situation where every two weeks I get a text from someone who lives in Connemara to tell me the electricity has gone out again. Over the summer months, it is every month. Therefore, we clearly have an issue specific to the Connemara area. The Minister of State mentioned Storm Éowyn and it was horrific, but equally Storms Bert and Darragh had serious implications for electricity and telecommunications in the Connemara area. We need a clear action plan from the Government now to deal with these crises as they are happening. Unfortunately, it does not seem like the work was done since last December and January to alleviate these pressures.

Sentiment score: -0.11

To be very clear here, I welcome any investment that helps this situation. However, we need to be clear that there is a need for long-term investment because of so many decades of underinvestment in the basic infrastructure in Connemara. That is why we have poles that are pushed over on their sides and cables still on the ground. We also need to look at what can be done immediately to alleviate this situation. It does not make sense for areas to have power outages every two weeks. When there is a power outage or a bad storm, it impacts them for weeks. That does not make sense. The Minister of State cannot control the weather - I am not saying he can - but he can control how we respond to this. It is a year on from Storm Éowyn. I said very clearly at that time that while the Government could not have predicted it to be the way it was, urgent action was needed to ensure we do not leave ourselves as vulnerable again. I urge the Minister of State to take immediate action now, as well as having a long-term plan to alleviate these concerns.

Sentiment score: 0.15