Storm Chandra: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-02-10
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Gareth Scahill (FG), Nominated by the Taoiseach

I welcome the Minister. As previous speakers have said, these are no longer one-off events. This is becoming an annual occurrence for us all. My sympathies go out to the people of the south east and the south, and in the north, in Donegal, who were affected by the floods last week.
We are less than a year on from 760,000 people being without power and water across the west after Storm Éowyn affected homes, businesses and farms. While great strides have been made and a lot of initiatives have been brought on in relation to empowering communities in terms of setting up the community response networks, the communications facilities, etc., we still come to these one-off events on an annual basis and we find ourselves in a position where we ask could more have been done and should more have been done.
Senator McCormack mentioned temporary solutions and how permanent solutions are needed. My own experience of this is the temporary solutions are put in place but then a lot of work has to go in to ensuring that the planning applications are robust enough to get the permanent solutions across the line. That is something that we cannot take for granted. We have to go through that process to be able to deliver that.
Senator Noonan spoke about sustainable solutions and the solutions that are available but, because these are happening so often now, maybe need to look at something different. Maybe we need to empower local authorities and special emergency response units to be able to tackle these situations to protect human habitats as well. While the habitats directive is probably one of these issues that is holding up a lot of the infrastructure developments that we need to get communities supported in this way, maybe we need to start looking at protecting our own habitats and our own business communities and giving the people who are living in and developing these communities a little support on that as well.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-02-10/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:36+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-02-10