Learnings needed after storm
There is an urgent need for the council, along with other statutory agencies, emergency services, public utility providers and community groups, to carry out an extensive review into the response and learnings around Storm Éowyn.
With more extreme weather events expected in future, Fianna Fáil's Áine Smith said the goal would be to form a set of “best practices” that would come into play whenever required.
She praised the response of the local council and emergency services personnel last time out but suggested a more co-ordinated effort is needed with additional “expertise”.
Any learnings at local level could then be fed up the chain to national level to help formulate a greater statutory response.
Her proposal, tabled at the April monthly meeting of Cavan County Council, was supported by party colleague Patricia Walsh.
She recognised that councillors and TDs had recently met with residents of some of the worst impacted areas in the west of the county.
Cllr Walsh lamented how some people had been left without power and access to services for up to three weeks post storm.
Sinn Féin's Stiofán Conaty backed the plan too.
However, he was hugely critical of the Humanitarian Assistance Scheme (HAS).
“Not a single person,” he spoke to had received a payment.
According to the most recent figures available, less than half of the welfare assistance claims made by people following Storm Éowyn in Cavan have been paid to date.
The county had one of the highest number of claims (5,284) made nationally under the scheme. Of the 2,061 claims issued, the payments amounted to €468,958.42.
Independent Brendan Fay meanwhile stated that he knew one home in Cavan still without phone connectivity, yet when eir were contacted on the issue, a representative blamed the local authority for instigating delays.
He added, with respect to HAS, that he was aware of one homeowner who put in a claim for €250 worth of lost fridge items but only received €38 in return.
Fianna Fáil's John Paul Feeley was keen to stress that nobody in west Cavan was “left abandoned” following the storm, but he accepted that there were cases where the response could have been better.
He too rounded on eir for blaming the local authority for delays in fixing poles and lines and restoring phone and broadband services. He added that the ESB is working to find ways of accessing forested lands to carry out repairs on roads “too narrow” and “not fit for purpose”.
Cathaoirleach Cllr T.P. O'Reilly, who serves as chair of the county's Emergency Response Committee, concluded by saying that the work put into dealing the Storm Éowyn by council staff and emergency workers was “second to none”.
He said that much of the repairs being looked at now relate to work that needed to be done “10 years ago”, and that such assessment should be “ongoing all the time”.