Michael Fitzmaurice
Roscommon-Galway · Independent Ireland · Ireland
“Basically, there was no Exchequer money at that time but we were still able to keep the bus service going. Unfortunately, there have been reviews, public consultations and various documents since then.”
“I thank the Tánaiste for that. The number was 120,000 in 2018. Think back, however, and you will see that it was 135,000 or 140,000 in the eighties. That was the base figure at a time when Ireland was awash with money.”
“A few weeks ago, I brought to the attention of the Minister of State, Deputy Harkin, a problem regarding apprenticeships. In fairness, she rang me last Sunday evening. Over the past few weeks, she has resolved this issue, which had given rise to problems for many apprentices. I thank her for resolving it.”
“I handed that list to the Minister of State, Deputy Moynihan, and he sent it on to the relevant Department. You can go from Boyle to Taghmaconnell in Roscommon, right through Fuerty, Athleague and other areas all the way into Galway and you will encounter the same problem. We can give out about what is happening, but we need to solve it.”
“They picked up students and brought them to national schools and secondary schools. Those buses were owned by the State. Ireland had, on average, a population of 3.5 million during the eighties. At that time, we were transporting between 135,000 and 140,000 children to school.”
“An awful lot of the children I am talking about have had concessionary tickets for the past two years. When the contracts are being drawn up, I just do not know why they to not reference 23- , 33- or 50-seaters. If this is done and if the population increases, all involved would under the procurement rules, be able to adapt.”
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“Outside of that, however, we have turf. There is another issue that some Minister needs to address, namely, the targeted agriculture modernisation schemes, TAMS. While I welcome the Minister, Deputy Heydon's announcement on the generators, TAMS are not going to work for sheds that have lost their roofs because the roof is off the shed now and there are cows calving and weanlings are in the sheds. What farmers want are purlins and sheets to galvanise, to put it simply. We do not need to build a full new shed, put in our name and have someone three months later tell us we can do it and then go down the road of getting a 40% grant. We need a hard money-type fund this minute. I ask the Minister to talk to the other Ministers about this because this needs to be done. This is not complicated stuff; it is galvanised sheets and purlins.”
“A budget must be put in place for small businesses and also for the likes of crèches and other such places. There is not one word out of anyone as to how we are going to help small businesses. They have been closed and they need to have a back-up. We need to make sure we do that. While I welcome that the Minister has not been on his new phone all the time, there is one thing I will ask of him. We need to look straightaway to see what we can do for local communities in reinforcement, be it through small generators or a grant towards them, especially for those who have underlying problems and for community hubs to make sure they are armed. On the humanitarian side, and I know the Minister is familiar with this, it seems to just concern the house in one form such as a fridge getting into trouble or maybe damage at the house.”
“That is what caused the problem everywhere and we have got to address it. A lot of contractors helped. A lot of farmers will need hedge cutting and other such jobs to be done. For those people, the Minister must consider extending the period when such work can be done beyond the end of this month. We must learn from this experience. We can give out but we need to learn from it. The Minister has group water schemes within the remit of his Department. He must arm them now for the future; likewise with design, build, operate, DBO, contracts. He must haul in Irish Water because it should be prepared for something like this happening again. That is in the Minister's gift and he needs to do it. Sadly, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, Deputy Peter Burke, seems to have disappeared.”
“I welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter. It is nearly three weeks since this bomb hit the west, the midlands and the north west. It is good to see people coming back but, my God, three weeks is a long time. Eamon Ryan's dream of air-to-water heat pumps turned into a nightmare for most people. They were perished in their houses. Thank God a lot of people had a chimney. We should go back and make sure that people are allowed chimneys in all counties because what some people endured was catastrophic. I commend the ESB - the people on the ground, not the people up at the top. There is a lot of talk about infrastructure. I have gone around the whole place and our problem is trees. Corridors of trees in woodlands were on top of the wires. They were on roads and on cables, be they communications cables or ESB cables.”
“A lot of money has been spent on NBI by the taxpayers of this country. Broadband is a fabulous thing but the problem is it is decimated at the moment. I have no great faith in Eir, because it will hardly fix a phone for you not to mind putting up the poles we need to put up, but it will need to be brought to task to make sure it replaces the infrastructure because-----”
“I welcome the Tánaiste's comments on trees but this needs to put into a regulation and funded. No more of this talk can go on. We can never endure again what we are after enduring. Will the Minister for trade and enterprise look at small businesses that have been closed over the past week? Some of them are going into two weeks now. A lot of places do not have power yet. Will the Minister for rural affairs to look at community hubs and a generator that a doctor can set up? We need to look at that. We need to learn. On the farmers, I appreciate there is a generator grant under TAMS, but there is not for old sheds the roof has gone off and no insurance. We need movement on that rapidly. Generators are a thing in rural areas that we need to look at, encourage and try to bring some in.”
“Will the Government enforce the issue with Irish Water? We are a local group water scheme. We had enough cop on to get generators. Irish Water is a big operation. There is no reason people should not have water in a time like this. We should have been ready for it.”
“People could not cook all week, and the cost of generators and all of that has been huge. The Tánaiste knows I spoke within the Government talks about trees. I am a contractor myself and 95% of everything I have seen has been a problem with trees. Will the Government bring in a regulation and fund it to look after situations where trees in forestry are within 30 m or 35 m of roads or a power or communications line? Second, regarding the farming community, farmers tonight or in the past two weeks have sheds with no roofs and the cows are calving. Will a fund be brought out for that? It is ferociously important that is done. Windblown timber is also a huge problem. I do not want task forces or talking shops. The Government is talking about a task force at the moment. It is pounds, shillings and pence that people need at the moment.”
“Nobody can prevent a storm but what we need to do is put appropriate measures of mitigation in place to make people's lives a bit easier in a time like this. Unfortunately, for people with underlying health conditions, those needing hoists, people with disabilities, newborn babies, young children or people needing PEG-feeding machines or the different sleep apnoea machines, all the different types of things people need would not work. There was absolutely no communication whatsoever because phone lines were down and it was as if we did not exist for those few days. I welcome Deputy Calleary's humanitarian fund but I ask him to look at one thing. He was always at the end of a phone when wanted it, but what needs to be done is to find out what is going on. The €50 or €100 will be paid but the rest is not being done.”
“First, I wish the Tánaiste well in his new position. Two weeks ago tonight, the people of the west, the north west and the midlands faced one of the toughest nights of their lives with the after-effects of this storm. They are still being felt and will be felt into the future. On Saturday morning, the clean-up operation began, where local communities and contractors got together to clear roads. I compliment them and the farming community. I also compliment the ESB crews who are out day and night. The guys on the ground in the ESB are doing tremendous work. There are some things higher up the ESB might learn. I hope today, in Cloonalough in Ballinlough, a form that is to be signed to get a contractor working to cut trees will be done fairly rapidly. We need to learn lessons from this about where things went wrong.”
“I welcome what the Minister, Deputy Calleary, did in respect of providing support to stay in hotels but that should have been done the first day. People needed to know. There are huge question marks. Elderly people who have trees in their gardens do not know if they will get funding from the humanitarian fund. The one thing we need to do is to provide a huge amount of funding for councils to try to undo the hanging branches and what is going on around them.”
“As for the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, where fences to neighbouring farms have been brought down, inspections under the scheme should be abandoned for the next three months. If we do not do that, we will kick the people who have suffered torture. In forestry, corridors need to be provided. Forests planted 20, ten or five years ago were have been destroyed. The windblow is unbelievable right throughout forestry. It is estimated that 40% of forestry in this country is in trouble. What are we going to do? We are going to get Teagasc and a few others to meet up, have a bit of a chat and a cup of tea and we will talk about it next week or the week after. This is about money. This is about people who could not cook in their houses and had to buy meals out. They had to rent accommodation. They have paid out the money.”
“Farmers, communities, Tidy Towns committees that will collect debris, councils, communities and people who had to pay extra money for food need pounds, shillings and pence, They do not need a review or task force or something down the road. This work has to start now. There are cattle in sheds that do not have a roof over their heads. There are cows which will be calving soon where the cowshed is gone. This is where we need action. There is a generator grant through the targeted agricultural modernisation scheme, TAMS, but it needs to be for the normal generator. We need to get water infrastructure, schools, crèches and all of that covered to ensure we have backup. Inspections in the agricultural sector should be suspended for one month, rather than being given a promise that the inspectors will go easy.”
“We have spent a great deal of money on broadband right around this country. The trees have devastated and made bits of the NBI broadband system. As for the likes of Eir, some factories might have more people working in them than that company has today. It is hard to get Eir to fix a phone, never mind getting it to start putting this together. It needs to do this fairly rapidly, and I think the Government needs to make it do it. Farmers were left without water but there are things we need to do. We need regulation on trees. In the line of farmers, we need to ensure funding is provided to replace sheds that were taken away. Sheds just disappeared in some places. The horticultural sector was affected as well. We do not need task forces and reviews.”
“Design, build and operate, DBO, suppliers, such as Veolia Ireland, decided to sit on their hands for a few days until they were kicked around the place to try to get up and running. That should never be accepted. If we learn one thing, it is the common denominator that has caused this problem. Yes, everyone knows it was a storm. Yes, everyone knows it was one of the worst we have ever had. What was the big problem? Throughout this country, one can see the corridors that have been left in forests. Forests have caused huge problems right around this country. The corridors are not 35 m on each side and the trees have taken down the main three-phase lines. Throughout the countryside, trees everywhere have knocked down wires but, on top of that, they have devastated broadband services.”
“The sad part about it is that the likes of the Red Cross or the Army were not called out. The elderly were abandoned, as were people with underlying health problems. We had to get generators to get people up to hospital beds. That is the type of devastation there was. Young kids being brought home after being born and people with sleep apnoea were left high and dry, as were schools. We have talked about water. Irish Water had no plan for this. It had no plan whatsoever with regard to generators. As for group water schemes, in all fairness I must compliment Mike Shield, as well as Karen from the group water federation, which started making contact and trying to get generators out.”
“The devastation was huge - no water, no electricity and people cold in their houses. I compliment the ESB on the amount of work it has done. The sickening fact is that I talked to a contractor who was bringing poling lorries from England. These lorries came to Holyhead but were not able to get on to the boat because the customs here were holding them up through paperwork. This is what Ireland did in an emergency. They had to drive from Liverpool to Scotland and they lost a day in doing their work. Someone somewhere should have written an order stating that, in an emergency, these lorries should be let through. It was as if people around this country, and in the west of Ireland especially, did not exist. There was no communication, phones did not work, there was no broadband and everything was in total disarray.”
“Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle. I want to wish you the best. I also wish the Minister of State the best. On Thursday night and Friday morning of the week before last, devastation came upon a lot of families around the country, especially in the west, the north west and the midlands. While it was warned, some people were surprised by the devastation that happened. First, I compliment not the Government response but the community response from contractors and farmers who went out with their tractors and loaders the following morning. Over a two-day period, they cleared all the roads. In actual fact, in some areas councils were not out until 4 o'clock in the evening, which is regrettable, because local communities had done the work to shift trees out of the way.”
“In the agri-climate rural environment scheme, ACRES, there is a major problem in Wexford. Farmers have been waiting for two years. They have had inspections but on the IT systems, it is the same BS we hear every day. I wish my colleagues from the west, Deputies Calleary, Canney, Naughton and Grealish, the best of luck. I ask the Minister for agriculture to think of a retirement scheme. For farmers with suckler cows, we see this evening that there are going to be layoffs in a factory. I ask the Minister to address that straight away. We have lost the suckler herd over the past five years. We intend to work constructively with the Government but it will be about producing the goods and not being like "The Late Late Show" and offering one for everyone in the audience.”
“I wish the Taoiseach the best of luck. I say to the Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs that I listened to Mr. John Deasy the other day, and, my God, we have some work to do in America to build relations. I heard that our diplomats shunned the Americans on the side that is in now. We have some work to do. I wish the Tánaiste the best in that regard. On housing, it was sickening to see the report two weeks ago that 60,000 houses have been started. A child would know that was because there was a rebate. Today, we see that we have fallen back by 7% in terms of housing. More people came into this country than we have houses to accommodate. Those are facts. That is also the case in respect of the people we have here. I wish the new Minister for agriculture well. There is one thing he needs to work on straight away.”