Brian Stanley criticises local authorities' storm preparedness

to acknowledge the work as well that was done during star notice or moan by the frontline staff and Ciarán a lot of work that you've overseen in Leish when you're director of services culverts and different things different pieces of infrastructure that was put in stood up fairly well to the test but here's what I'm going to have this highlight there are some problems the the first thing is in relation to the generators for rural room water schemes the that won't be Ciarán what they want about that because Ciarán has no role with rural water schemes and it's an issue that local authorities need to deal with the local authorities need to particularly big schemes uh Ciarán you'll be familiar with one for the heat for example and the Ballyro and Ballypeca schemes you know they're all they're all big schemes supplying thousands of households between them and the same in every other county I do I do think that just to note that and I'm saying that that's a an issue needs to be dealt with separately because that's that's the division the way it works but just to move on that um the number of local authorities staff has ballooned and I'm going to say this to the department in particular uh Keith this is an issue you need to take on board you're granting the uh staff for arts for community for this for that the other right and there's some fault as well with the local authorities because the list that you're putting in the request that you're making for resources you know it's ballooned out but what doesn't have in is geos general operatives and this is a real problem there was less than 50 geos in leash during the last storm aeon right and this is a problem because you don't have the people to go out first of all to do the maintenance preventative maintenance a pallet stuck in the culvert blocking it that's not caught in time before the storm happens now that's not taken away from the good work that's being done by the skeleton staff that's there but you have huge municipal areas where an overseer with a handful of with a handful of workers that's no good and local authorities have to get back to what they should be doing and I'm just saying to them I'm saying to the county managers association and it's not I'll be saying it locally as well and I'm saying it to yourself Keith that you need to stop this you need to get local authorities back to what they're doing you're approving staff request for staff that uh the place is full with them there's armies of staff in the local authorities but they're not where they need to be right and I'll stop on this on the the housing section of leish county council have started using more indoor more uh more of their own staff direct labour guess what they're doing relets for houses a lot quicker guess what they're doing them a lot cheaper and I'm giving that example and you need to get back to that and I'm making that point the second point I want to make is that the ESB you're in the same situation because you don't have the linesmen now that well I welcome the fact the legislation is coming through and I know you're saying progress and I welcome that and just to say your response was phenomenal you know you had to go in and work in very difficult difficult terrain getting into wooded areas you know it took days to cut your way in very very difficult for the staff and you know they really need to be get full credit for that but some of the some of the outages were caused by branches overhanging you know but in not that many decades ago a couple of decades ago linesmen I don't think you still have linesmen you call them technicians now linesmen crews would be out there every every linesman crew there was general operative there was a there was ganger and maybe two linesmen and they had a crew they had a crew cab and on the back of that they had chainsaws that everything all the equipment that they needed it and they took care of all that so a lot of those small outages you know where a bow of a tree or something like that came down so is there any no I think recently you've started you recently you've started increasing your staff and I welcome that and by the way I welcome the expansion to the training center I wasn't able to make it that day but the best located in Portleigh is fantastic but do you intend expanding the number of outdoor staff to actually deal with that kind of preventative maintenance that's the question I'm asking I'm taking the order so CCMA first that general operatives is there in your view is there an issue in terms of supply and is it a factor in terms of storm response I wouldn't call it a a general factor in a recording response look we're under a budgetary constraints uh we have a workforce planning system getting approval for other staff but we're going to let me answer that we're going through a workforce planning process every year we do the budget and that's a sign and there's difficult decisions to be made we would love more staff there is I think in the next two years with uh the full transition of Irish water or Ishka Erin and the staff will move or that we will end up in most authorities with a lot of staff being retained which will add to our to our staff numbers all I know from our own example in Meade that we have increased the geo workforce over the last couple of years quite substantially I'm sure other authorities are in the same process but it is a local resource issue based on the size and scale of their own authorities in relation to uh Ishka Erin and and the group water schemes it was an issue that I was very acutely aware of during the whole process I have to admit at the start yes Ishka Erin's focus was in relation to the public water supplies but I have to give them a compliment that once they had the bulk of their own uh public supplies sorted they recognized that the group water schemes didn't have the capacity and capability to sort themselves out in some very substantial schemes across the country as you say they did step in and now they have acknowledged that role of support for group water schemes and I think that that we would have to acknowledge that uh Cone is written you want to add yeah I suppose I would say like in a severe weather event so we we were lucky enough to Sarmay when passed us by but we did have the severe snow before that in Carlow like you'd never hold the staff complement the GOs that would deal with a severe weather event so there's always going to be a need to bring in sorry I understand that and I'm not saying that you should that you can have all this big army here ready to go and you hold them on 52 weeks a year I'm not saying that but because you don't have enough GOs to actually carry out the small preventative maintenance you wind up with a larger problem when there is a storm and I've given so many examples I've seen them well I can only speak for the counties I've worked in yeah like I I wouldn't say that necessarily there's always like there's always more jobs than we can do that's the nature of what we do we have TDs councillors ringing us constantly and we get what we can when we can that that's a reality you know and at the moment I would feel we have enough GOs we're always and as as Ciaran says we're going to transform or transfer them back from Irish water and that will increase the complement but you also have to be careful with that you're not carrying people that you don't necessarily need all the time okay great ESP um let's pass it to Brian to get to comment on the resourcing yeah deputy are you going to increase the number of general operators so yes so even this year deputy we've increased our number of apprenticeships intake into our training center in Portlaoise from 60 last year to 156 this year so over a doubling and that is part of a continued program to build our own internal resource capacity but in addition in the timber space as you mentioned specifically we've done significant work in growing our timber cutting capacity this year so this year we've increased our timber cutting capacity by about just under 30 percent and continuing to grow that further and we're doing that with great help from ETBs particularly uh Gretop Galway Roskam and ETB where we've developed with them uh an apprenticeship program for timber cutting two two-year program that provides indigenous employment locally for your staff no these would be through our contractors so we do all of our planned timber cutting is where there are contractors but our technicians do have some capability to do light timber cutting branches and like what you mentioned earlier okay okay great department department yeah okay well i'll bring you back in on that all right you're two minutes you