Medical Aids and Appliances
Dail Éireann — 2026-01-15
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Joanna Byrne (SF), Louth

There are clear, proactive actions that can be taken by the Government. The Government can review the tree-cutting capabilities each local authority has so that it can respond adequately when we have another storm event and tackle trees on public land. The Government can ensure landowners are complying with the Roads Act 1993 to remove diseased or damaged roadside trees throughout the State. The Department should, and must, engage with pendant providers to identify who the vulnerable users are and what type of network they are connected to. The expert advice we have received is that home-monitoring and health alarm customers should be migrated from copper landline-dependent devices to newer hardware devices with a mobile network backup. Home-monitoring and health alarm customers should be migrated onto more modern devices that will work with fibre to the home, FTTH, broadband where such networks are available to them. FTTH networks are significantly more resilient to storm damage than copper landline networks and are more easily repaired. We should maintain a stock of monitoring devices that work with mobile networks and can be deployed by the providers following major storms to impacted customers who are likely to experience extended fixed-line outages.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-01-15/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:30+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-01-15