Delivery of the National Broadband Plan: Statements
Seanad Éireann — 2026-04-28
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Chris Andrews (SF), Labour Panel

Storm Éowyn was the first big test for this Government in the new Dáil term and it took almost three weeks for power and connectivity to be restored to all homes, farms, schools, businesses and clubs. The Government failed that first test but lessons have to be learned. Ministers cannot just sit in meetings or berate Internet providers. We will have other storms similar to Storm Éowyn and power and connectivity will be lost again, especially in rural Ireland. We must do everything to mitigate risks. We must make proactive steps now and into the future to remove potential threats to the network. Storm Éowyn took down over 6,000 telecoms poles that have had to be replaced, along with vast expanses of cables. The majority of this damage was caused by extreme wind hitting diseased and damaged trees.
The length and breadth of this country, there are elderly people doing their best to live independently who rely on health monitoring and pendant alarms. When that damage was caused a number of elderly, vulnerable people had no monitoring in place for an extended period throughout the country. Clearly, that is not acceptable and our citizens' lives are at risk if they cannot call for help. It has been over a year since Storm Éowyn. What will the Government's proactive multi-departmental approach be? Clear proactive actions can be taken now. The Government can review the tree cutting capabilities each local authority has so they can respond adequately when we have another storm event and to tackle trees on public land. It can ensure that landowners are complying with the Roads Act 1993 to remove diseased or damaged roadside trees throughout the State. The Department must engage with pendant alarm providers to identify the vulnerable service users, where they are and what type of network they are connected to. The expert advice we received is that home monitoring health alarm customers should be migrated from copper landline-dependent devices onto newer hardware devices with a mobile network backup. Home monitoring health alarm customers should also be migrated onto modern devices that 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. The Government needs to also look at maintaining a stock of monitoring devices that would enable mobile networks that can be deployed by the providers, following major storms to impacted customers likely to experience extended fixed line outages. There is a lot of work to do and there are concerns among rural communities.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/seanad/2026-04-28/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:54:52+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-04-28