2025-12-18

110. Deputy Pa Daly asked the Minister for Climate, Energy and the Environment the steps he is taking to make critical energy infrastructure more resilient to extreme weather events; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [72818/25]

Deputy Farrell will take Question No. 110 on behalf of Deputy Pa Daly.

The Government has taken steps with immediate and medium-term impact to improve the resilience of critical energy networks. In February 2025, the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, asked ESB Networks to prepare a winter resilience plan to enhance the grid in the most vulnerable locations following Storm Éowyn. That plan was updated in October. Core work undertaken includes remedial work to the network; work with Coillte and the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine to identify segments of the network that are at the highest future risk; replenishing emergency stock, spare parts and materials; increasing staffing levels and available contractor resources; and establishing formal mutual aid arrangements for extreme weather events. ESB Networks is also increasing the number of access officers who engage with landowners on forestry works. We are preparing legislation to enhance ESB Networks' powers to manage vegetation and the Government approved heads of a Bill in July. Work on advancing that legislation continues as a matter of priority. While those measures will have crucial short-term impacts, for the long term, significant investment in the electricity grid will support overall resilience. On Tuesday, 16 December 2025, the CRU published price review 6, PR6, which sanctions investment in the grid up to 2030. The CRU has proposed approval of an investment of up to €18.9 billion, with a €13.8 billion baseline investment guaranteed. Under the 2024 national adaptation framework, a new suite of sectoral adaptation plans across 13 key sectors, including electricity and gas networks, were recently approved and published by the Government. The national electricity and gas sectoral plans align with the aim of the critical entities resilience directive, to enhance the future resilience of the energy grid to the long-term impacts of climate change.

Last night, thousands of households across Connemara were without power again. There was a storm and lightning. No one is going to blame the Government for lightening or a storm by any stretch of the imagination. However, we have a situation where every two weeks I get a text from someone who lives in Connemara to tell me the electricity has gone out again. Over the summer months, it is every month. Therefore, we clearly have an issue specific to the Connemara area. The Minister of State mentioned Storm Éowyn and it was horrific, but equally Storms Bert and Darragh had serious implications for electricity and telecommunications in the Connemara area. We need a clear action plan from the Government now to deal with these crises as they are happening. Unfortunately, it does not seem like the work was done since last December and January to alleviate these pressures.

I thank the Deputy for raising her concerns on behalf of her constituents in Connemara. That is why we published PR6 this week, which is one of the largest investments in the history of the State. More than 500 capital projects will be delivered as part of the programme and, as I said earlier, we are placing resilience at the centre of this policy to ensure we can deal with energy emergencies and severe weather events. That is why we established the national emergency co-ordination group, chaired by the Department of housing and a co-ordinated with a national response. That certainly aligns with energy actions. As I said earlier, we have introduced a number of operational measures and we need to continue to work with ESB Networks and EirGrid to build resilience into our network. We also approved heads of a Bill in July for the ESB Networks' statutory corridor powers because we have had difficulties in the past accessing major works. That is certainly something we will prioritise into 2026.

To be very clear here, I welcome any investment that helps this situation. However, we need to be clear that there is a need for long-term investment because of so many decades of underinvestment in the basic infrastructure in Connemara. That is why we have poles that are pushed over on their sides and cables still on the ground. We also need to look at what can be done immediately to alleviate this situation. It does not make sense for areas to have power outages every two weeks. When there is a power outage or a bad storm, it impacts them for weeks. That does not make sense. The Minister of State cannot control the weather - I am not saying he can - but he can control how we respond to this. It is a year on from Storm Éowyn. I said very clearly at that time that while the Government could not have predicted it to be the way it was, urgent action was needed to ensure we do not leave ourselves as vulnerable again. I urge the Minister of State to take immediate action now, as well as having a long-term plan to alleviate these concerns.

We hear the Deputy loud and clear on this side of the House. I acknowledge the tremendous work of all the operators and workers within ESB Networks who have gone above and beyond. We saw that during Storm Éowyn when they reassured us that they were working day and night to get supply back to many households. That is why the Government has responded. We have allocated over €1.5 billion to ESB Networks. That was approved through the national development plan and legislated for last month. That will, in one sense, lower finance costs for ESB Networks. It will support the delivery at pace. We want to see that in west Galway, Mayo and all across the country. We want to ensure we have limited impact across the network when we have severe weather events. We will continue that investment over the next number of years. As I said earlier, unprecedented investment in our energy grid will support resilience and ensure we can get connections to those 300,000 homes we want delivered by 2030.