Richard Boyd Barrett urges emergency audit after Storm Owen
Richard Boyd Barrett warned that Storm Owen revealed severe weaknesses in water and power infrastructure, leaving tens of thousands facing outages and hardship. He called for an emergency audit of the electricity grid and water systems, immediate emergency payments like Scotland's, and increased resources for ambulance services.
He said much of Dublin escaped the worst ravages of Storm Owen, but across the country tens and tens of thousands suffered extreme hardship from water outages, power outages and a lack of resilience in key infrastructure. He criticised members of the House who scoffed at weather warnings before the storm and said the events exposed serious weaknesses in emergency response capacity.
He urged an emergency audit of the electricity grid and water infrastructure to ensure weather resilience. He advocated for a system to send emergency payments directly to people affected by severe weather - citing Scotland's practice - rather than relying on the existing Community Welfare Officer process.
He linked destruction in forests to the monocultural forestry model, arguing that Sitka spruce planted in straight lines is more vulnerable to being knocked over in storms and that such monocultures also make flooding worse. He said forestry policy needs to be reconsidered in light of storm damage.
He criticised the outsourcing of work by the ESB and Irish Water, saying contracting out reduces capacity to respond to emergencies and noting that ESB workers previously struck over the issue. He highlighted ambulance staffing shortfalls, reporting that ambulance workers told him Scotland has 6,196 staff for a population similar to Ireland's while Ireland has 2,321, and described the National Ambulance Service as massively understaffed and under-resourced.
Storm impact and infrastructure failures
He said much of Dublin escaped the worst ravages of Storm Owen, but across the country tens and tens of thousands suffered extreme hardship from water outages, power outages and a lack of resilience in key infrastructure. He criticised members of the House who scoffed at weather warnings before the storm and said the events exposed serious weaknesses in emergency response capacity.
Call for emergency audits and emergency payments
He urged an emergency audit of the electricity grid and water infrastructure to ensure weather resilience. He advocated for a system to send emergency payments directly to people affected by severe weather - citing Scotland's practice - rather than relying on the existing Community Welfare Officer process.
Forestry practices and flood risk
He linked destruction in forests to the monocultural forestry model, arguing that Sitka spruce planted in straight lines is more vulnerable to being knocked over in storms and that such monocultures also make flooding worse. He said forestry policy needs to be reconsidered in light of storm damage.
Outsourcing, ESB and ambulance staffing concerns
He criticised the outsourcing of work by the ESB and Irish Water, saying contracting out reduces capacity to respond to emergencies and noting that ESB workers previously struck over the issue. He highlighted ambulance staffing shortfalls, reporting that ambulance workers told him Scotland has 6,196 staff for a population similar to Ireland's while Ireland has 2,321, and described the National Ambulance Service as massively understaffed and under-resourced.
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Transcript
Yeah, thankfully, much of Dublin escaped the worst ravages of Storm Owen, but I know that across the country, tens and tens of thousands of people suffered extreme hardship as a result of water outages and power outages and the lack of resilience of our key infrastructure in those areas and water and power. And it exposed extreme vulnerabilities in terms of our ability to respond to emergency situations. Some, including some of this House who scoffed at weather warnings before the storm, should hang their heads in shame, quite honestly. And we need to obviously do an emergency audit of our electricity grid and of our water infrastructure to make sure that it is going to be weather resilient. And I personally think the destruction wrought on forests should also ask us to think once again about the monocultural model of forestry in this country. Because monocultures of Sitka screws planted in straight lines are much more vulnerable to being knocked over during storms. They also make flooding worse, it's important to say. We need, like Scotland, a system to get emergency payments to people rather than having to go through the rigmarole of the Community Welfare Officer. In Scotland, they send emergency payments directly to people as soon as they are impacted by severe weather events. We need to think again about the outsourcing of much of the ESB and Irish Waters' work to contractors which robs them of the direct capacity to do a lot of the jobs. Workers in the ESB went on strike a few years ago precisely because of the contracting out of their work lessening their capacity to respond to emergencies like this. One last thing in my last few seconds, I just want to say this. This also highlights our ability to deal with all sorts of emergencies. Last week workers from the National Ambulance Service came in to me and shocked me to be honest when they told me that in Scotland there are 6,196 people working in the ambulance service with the same population as Ireland. And in Ireland we have 2,321, half of what they have in Scotland. So our ambulance services, a key emergency service is an instance of we are massively understaffed and under resourced. We need to get those resources in.