Ceisteanna ó Cheannairí - Leaders' Questions Dail Éireann — 2026-01-13 ============================================================ Micheál Martin (FF), Cork South-Central I thank the Deputy for raising a very important issue and one which is under constant review and attention by the Government. Storm Éowyn was probably the worst storm we ever experienced in terms of severity - wind strength - and it had enormous impacts in terms of power outages and people being without water for quite a considerable period of time. An overarching review was undertaken by the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management under the Department of housing which focused on a range of areas. Its findings were submitted to the Government on 21 October. The key recommendations related to humanitarian support, communication with the public, co-ordination of the response, resilience of critical infrastructure and essential services. A number of those measures have been taken in advance of this winter. Community supports centres, for example, were identified as a priority at the start. When I went out and about after Storm Éowyn, the community-based response was mixed. It was particularly strong in some locations and weak in others. We wanted to standardise the response and we wanted a rapid activation of community support centres that would co-ordinate with local authorities to support communities impacted by severe storms. For example, in Donegal on 4 to 6 October, eight community centres were activated in response to Storm Amy. We are improving that area. In addition to that, all those areas will, as soon as the tender is over, have the generators in place so they can respond to the needs of individual households in a given community where a storm might occur. Likewise, the Department of Transport is working with local authorities and Transport Infrastructure Ireland to confirm winter planning arrangements for all the road networks. Agreements between local authorities and local contractors are now formalised in terms of forestry and agriculture, so they could be stood up quickly for road clearing. The normal routine stuff - sandbags, salt road treatments and so on - has all been well prepared in advance, and likewise with TII. The procurement process for mobile generators had to be entered into by the Department of Rural and Community Development but those generators can now be deployed rapidly when required to support community support centres. There have been a series of ongoing meetings. One of the issues with Uisce Éireann during Storm Éowyn was there were very few generators in place at many of its facilities. It has now made significant progress on the installation of circa 30 new permanent standby generators. I will come back in on the legislation. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-13/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00 Sitting date: 2026-01-13