Roderic O'Gorman
Dublin West · Green Party · Ireland
“These are men and women who served their working lives within the British civil service system but who, following unification, would be drawing their pensions in a united Ireland. The question of the funding of that will be extremely significant in any talks following a "Yes" vote on both parts of the island.”
“Some 100 extra staff have been hired to the public domain team to tackle waste and dumping and our councillors will continue to fight for a cleaner and greener Dublin.”
“These challenges are magnified by the continued failure of the current political institutions in Northern Ireland to operate for the best interests of the people rather than achieving best political advantage for the parties.”
“In the Dublin Central area, an average of 50 tonnes per month of illegally dumped waste is being removed by the council. It is a huge amount of waste, and this is more than is collected in an entire year from whole counties elsewhere in the country. Our current model of waste management is a direct contributor to this.”
“This means that in many areas, bags are the notional solution but these cause issues with seagulls or foxes or are intermingled with illegally dumped bags. The net result is our footpaths are strewn with waste. Dublin City Council recently rolled out a system of waste compactors in the core areas of the city centre.”
“The solution is to rationalise the current system, put local authorities back at the centre of waste management processes and use this to get a better handle on pricing and illegal dumping through contracts that are right for each specific area, instead of the one-size-fits-all model we have at the moment that is not actually working anyw…”
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“When we ask why it is so hard for the Child and Family Agency to recruit young social workers into those key front-line posts in Tusla, we have a responsibility in this Chamber as to how we speak about it and its agencies' work, always looking for improvement and highlighting where errors or mistakes have been made but also recognising its crucial job. There is no more difficult job than that of a social worker who has to go into a family situation where a judgment has been made that children need to be removed. It happens only in the most crucial and the most difficult situations. It is important as well as looking to improve Tusla and its operations at all times. We have obligations in terms of supporting its work as well.”
“It is also important to recognise the context in which Tusla operates. Between 2020 and 2024, there was a 39% increase in referrals to the Child and Family Agency. That is a dramatic increase in the scale of provision that it had to engage with. As well as the scale, there is also the complexity of the cases, including children who were facing very different needs as a result of Covid, children who were neurodivergent and children whose first language was not English. The scale of change that Tusla had to address in that period was huge. As much as there are incidences where there is very legitimate criticism of the Child and Family Agency, I had the privilege to see the huge work that the agency itself and many of the organisations funded by it undertook and undertakes in communities all over the country.”
“It investigates those situations where a child has died or been involved in a serious incident while known to the State or in the care of the State. The learning from the work of the national review panel is incredibly important in making improvements to our child welfare architecture across the State and ensuring that similar situations do not occur again. Placing it on a statutory footing, I think, will further strengthen the key role that organisation plays. The final point I will make is that I was always conscious of the criticisms about Tusla that we often hear in this House. Where there is an organisation looking after the most vulnerable of children, it is essential that it is open to criticism and open to the need to improve at all times the services it provides to children.”
“Even though it is voluntary, that formality needs to be in place because anytime a child leaves the care of their parents and goes into the care of the State, that is a significant moment. I welcome the measures addressed towards foster carers. A safe and nurturing foster home is always a better option for a child than being in a residential placement, particularly at a time of such enormous demand for Tusla's services. Efforts have been made to make fostering more sustainable and to recognise the hugely important work foster carers do, but more is needed, so I am happy to see this measure adopted in the Bill. It is not in the Bill yet, but the Minister referred to placing the national review panel on a statutory footing. Again, that is an important step that is needed. The national review panel plays an incredibly important role.”
“These are the fundamental principles that give effect to the duty to respect the rights of children and their best interests and to have the views and preferences of children known, understood and given consideration and due weight. I also acknowledge the important improvement in section 6 where it comes to the operation of voluntary care, where the Bill seeks to give Tusla the ability to address more effectively short-term care needs of children requiring care. Voluntary care is an important part of our child welfare mechanism. It ensures that parents can, in agreement with Tusla, allow their child to go into care for a certain period. However, because it is done by agreement, there was maybe some lack of formality over elements of the voluntary care system.”
“That is another important point in ensuring that vital information about child protection issues is never held or guarded by one agency of the State on the basis of maybe some sort of quibble over the general data protection regulation, GDPR, or the like. I also welcome the inclusion of the new section on guiding principles to the 1991 Act. This is an essential piece and brings the Act into proper alignment with the modern view and the foundational basis of our entire suite of child protection legislation. By rights, this probably should have been done after the 2012 referendum. It has taken us too long to get to this point, but it is important that these guiding principles now form part of the law.”
“I know the weight of obligations placed on those who will be its members - the Department, the assistant Garda commissioner, senior HSE executives - will be great. I know all will be absolutely committed to the matters at hand, but that co-ordinating role of a chair will be important. As regards the childcare implementation and inter-agency committee, which, as the Minister of State knows, has been meeting on an administrative basis for almost two years at this stage, putting that on a firm statutory basis, as this legislation will do, is really important. I also acknowledge in this Bill the legal requirement for relevant bodies to co-operate. That is provided for in section 11, relating to the duty to co-operate, which mandates not only collaboration but also the sharing of hard data and information.”
“Absolutely, there are good examples of inter-agency co-operation already in place, but every agency will admit that it is not absolute. Making it a statutory obligation, as this Bill does, for organisations to engage frequently and to meet promptly is a very important function. This section sets out in detail the objectives and functions of this committee, who exactly will be part of it and, crucially, the means through which information will be shared and accessed in pursuit of child protection. This is a good move, but one thing that cannot be placed in legislation, I am sure the Minister of State will agree, is the need for a strong chairperson. That role will be indispensable in making this committee work.”
“Enhancing and strengthening inter-agency co-operation is probably the most crucial and the most consequential move we can make, especially as it had been clear to me that there is potential for lapses or failures in timely communication or timely engagement, particularly where it is essential that different parts of the State that deal directly with children should be talking to one another. As regards the most persistent critiques of the child welfare system in this country, from the children's ombudsman, from the last special rapporteur on child protection, from the childcare law reporting committee, all of those focused on situations where State agencies disagreed or stuck very rigidly to their own remits and children were left exposed and fell through cracks.”
“Nevertheless, we are painfully aware that there are children who have been profoundly failed by those around them with a duty of care, including the State and its agencies. This Bill will strengthen the child protection architecture and increase both responsiveness and accountability where necessary. In terms of the Bill, a crucial element, and one I inserted, is section 10, which establishes the childcare implementation and inter-agency committee. This will put on a statutory basis, with very clear responsibilities, the committee I brought together on an administrative basis during my term as Minister. The committee involves Tusla, An Garda Síochána, the HSE, the Department of justice and others.”
“I welcome this legislation and acknowledge the hard work of officials in the Department of Children, Disability and Equality. I know the Minister of State and the Minister, Deputy Foley, will recognise that work as well. Work on this Bill has been ongoing for some time. I was involved in some of the drafting work relating to the Bill when I was in the Department. I hope that it transits quickly through these Houses. We have to consistently ask ourselves if our child protection laws and practices are effective. We must acknowledge that real progress has been made in this State on child protection since the referendum in 2012 and with the creation of the Department and of Tusla.”
“While our international protection decision system must be more efficient and that will reduce numbers overall, if the Government fails to take advantage of the lower arrival numbers to change the accommodation system and to begin that move away from the expensive private providers of international protection accommodation, the Minister and his Government will find themselves hopelessly exposed when some international event outside of their control creates the next wave of migration across Europe.”
“The relentless pressure I faced in sourcing accommodation has lessened and openings are consequently fewer. This is all because we have a moderate, co-operative Government in London, but what happens if Reform UK wins the next UK general election? What happens if the Minister faces Richard Tice as home secretary? What would have happened if the Starmer Government had pushed forward its mandatory ID cards policy? Which UK land border, which an entire peace process depends on being completely open, would have been the first to see an impact? With the lower arrival numbers, the Minister's Government has been given a moment to act decisively.”
“That means adopting the pact and making our decisions more efficient, but it also calls for the Government to preserve basic legal rights and to put the same relentless focus on the accommodation side and moving away as quickly as possible from private providers. It calls for a border procedure that does not involve the incarceration of minors and their guardians. The cold house approach, the kind of hostile environment beloved of the UK Conservative Party, simply does not work. It is not supported by the evidence. Look at the post-Brexit migration numbers in the UK. The Minister knows as well as I the overriding factors determining international protection numbers in Ireland are decisions made at the Cabinet table in Downing Street. Right now, the numbers are lower.”
“In today's Bill, some of that is formalised into new structures that look to weigh the balance against someone accessing refuge here. That may be the signal the Government wants to send from today's debate, but it is storing up new problems for the future and it penalises people in desperate situations for no real policy benefit. We absolutely need reform. We need decisions to be made more effectively and quickly. I acknowledge that, following investment and reform made under the last Government, the International Protection Office is now delivering its decisions on status in a far more timely way. However, we have to separate the policy we need from the policy that plays well in political theatre.”
“For the record, in the last Government, responsibility for immigration control, the International Protection Office, the refugee appeals tribunal, decisions on visas, family reunification policy - responsibility for every one of those areas - remained with the Department of Justice. The one area that was removed to the Department of children was responsibility for accommodation for those seeking international protection. As the Minister will be aware, that has now returned to the Department of justice. Now we are seeing a series of changes being loudly flagged in the media, including family reunification being tightened for no real reason, a diminution of legal advices that tests the limits of established due process, and fully desk-based reviews with no oral hearings.”
“If it is the latter, what are the consequences for those this law claims to serve? What are the consequences for our country of focusing on areas where problems do not exist, like with draconian family reunification changes, but failing to focus on the acute problems, such as those in reception and accommodation? I need to call out the persistent efforts across the Minister's party to muddy the waters about the approach taken to these issues by the last Government. The Taoiseach persistently says that he is glad migration is back in the Department of justice. It is worrying that he was under the illusion that migration was not the responsibility of the Department of Justice in the last Government, particularly considering he was Taoiseach for two and a half years during that period.”
“It was a system that buckled when Ireland started to experience the same number of people seeking international protection as other European countries, compounded by the war in Ukraine at the same time. It was a nightmare confluence of factors for which our State was utterly unprepared. Therefore, we arrive today at this Bill. I acknowledge the efforts of the Minister's officials in what has been a complex drafting process. However, given the tone of the debates around migration - the heightened context under which this comes before us - it is the duty of Opposition TDs to ask whether we are solely advancing solutions to real world problems or we are bringing forth policies that have more to do with playing to a particular political line than improving our system.”
“Going it alone, as the UK did, solves no problems; it only makes things worse. However, how this reform is implemented and what wider reforms are being brought forward at the same time is where we need to be extremely careful. We have the benefit in Ireland of being able to learn from the experiences of other jurisdictions, such as the UK, about what is effective and fair, but also what does not work. Speaking objectively, some elements of the Bill are needed. The Government is attempting with this Bill to address the two decades of policy failure that led to an international protection system that left people waiting for a decision about their status for years.”
“I am the first to say that reform of our international protection system is necessary, not simply because of the changes at EU level, but because there is international agreement and universal agreement that we need a system that is fit for purpose. I say that because I saw first hand the consequences of years of compounded bad policy decisions, along with a failure to recognise the nature of modern asylum and plan for a system that responds to the reality of asylum today. I want to make a genuine effort to be fair because managing this is one of the hardest tasks in politics today. The asylum and migration pact, though imperfect, is important in that it ensures the whole EU works together on these issues. That is what I argued for in government and what I continue to believe today.”
“Prime Minister Orbán may well be here later this year as part of the events relating to the EU Presidency. Will the Taoiseach make his views about the value of freedom of speech, as represented by Pride, known to Mr. Orbán if he does come here?”
“The Mayor of Budapest, my Green Party colleague Gergely Karácsony, is being prosecuted for holding a Pride parade in the city last June. As the Green Party spokesperson for foreign affairs, Councillor Janet Horner, has pointed out, Mayor Karácsony is facing a fine this time. Will he be facing jail the next time? In June, I and Irish MEPs joined the hundreds of thousands of Hungarians in standing against the efforts of Orbán's Government to stifle the freedom of speech that Pride represents. At what point does Orbán pass the tipping point? At what point do we recognise that his Government has gone beyond being conservative and very right wing and has actually become an authoritarian entity that is using the law to stifle freedom of speech?”
“On Monday, I wrote to the Taoiseach to ask that he, the Minister and Ministers of State in Deputy Byrne's Department brief Opposition leaders on the EU's response, the suspension of the EU-US trade deal, the threat of tariffs on eight countries and the potential use of the anti-coercion instrument. The Taoiseach has said he will do that. It would be useful for those briefings to take place so that we can understand. The Opposition was generally supportive during the tariffs crisis last year. People would like to understand the approach being adopted. Ireland has to use every relationship with the United States below Cabinet level to make changes to the US approach.”
“I will use the short amount of time I have today to speak about the situation in Greenland. We cannot overstate how serious the current situation is. The sabre rattling we are hearing from President Trump is very reminiscent of what we heard from Vladimir Putin in 2020 and 2021 in advance of the invasion of Ukraine. If the United States attempts to take Greenland against the stated wishes of the people of Greenland, it will shatter the relationship between Europe and the United States. It will spark an economic conflict that will leave both the US and the EU worse off. Greenland is not a piece of ice, as President Trump has described it. It is a sovereign territory with a long and proud history. It is important to say that history has involved working closely with the United States for many years.”
“The title of this business, "International Developments: Statements", has the capacity to include many things. It could include the Irish Iranians whom I joined in demonstrating outside the Dáil earlier. They were protesting the bloody and brutal repression of protests on the part of the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran. It could include the Palestinian protestors on the other side of the road, who were highlighting the ongoing killing of civilians in Gaza and the West Bank despite the existence of a ceasefire and the ongoing threat to the potential of a two-state solution created by the expansion of settlements. We can do something small but meaningful in that regard by passing Senator Frances Black's occupied territories Bill, including services, in full.”
“It will be interesting and valuable for us to know when the review of the Act will be published and whether the Minister of State or the senior Minister in the Department will bring forward changes and improvements to the Bill on foot of that review.”
“We introduced into Irish labour law for the first time the recognition of flexible and remote working, along with greatly expanding parents' leave and introducing domestic violence leave. It is important that the Government continues to build on these successes. In the Chamber I have raised a number of times my concerns about where the Government is going on investment in public transport, and we can come back to that on another day. Specifically regarding remote working, I was the Minister to introduce that. I built in a review of the Work Life Balance and Miscellaneous Provisions Act. That review took place earlier at the end of last year.”
“Evidence shows it can boost long-term productivity and reduce attrition and turnover. It can allow for people in a caring role to continue as full members of the workforce. Most relevant to this motion, it can tackle issues around congestion, peak commuting capacity failures and associated air quality and emissions issues. There are many wins in embracing flexibility and remote working in a co-ordinated way. This was at the heart of many of the initiatives my party took in government. Our investment in the prioritisation of public transport has led to record journey numbers being undertaken in urban and rural areas. We pulled some large public transport projects off the mothball shelf, including metro, Luas and DART electrification.”
“I thank Deputy Wall for bringing forward this motion which we in the Green Party are very happy to support. Fundamentally, the motion recognises that our economic health as a country is intrinsically linked to the well-being of workers, students and carers. Our economic health is linked to their ability to live, travel and pursue their lives in a way that is facilitated and supported by the choices that the State makes. Too often, people feel they face a battle just to get to and from work. They have longer and longer commutes and spend more time away from their kids and families. When this happens every day over many years, it leaves people feeling failed and frustrated that things never seem to change. We know that progress can be made, and we have seen how effective remote and flexible working can be in some areas.”
“The Green Party has called on the Minister and his Government to publish a plan B to show how, across all sectors of the economy, they will try to get us back on track to meet the emissions reduction targets. This project could serve as a model as to how that could be done across the economy. As regards one of the key consequences of the decision set out in the Department's sectoral plan for transport in November of last year, moving that 2:1 ratio of public transport to roads back to 1:1, I think we are already seeing the negative consequences of that. If the project recommends, in light of the height of our transport emissions and the importance of investment in new public transport, a return to the 2:1 ratio, will the Government accept that recommendation?”
“The Minister's comments over Christmas cannot be taken in any way other than raising a white flag on this issue. What shocks me is that it is happening four years before the date for our 2030 targets. Notwithstanding our disagreement on that, will the Minister speak to a particular project taking place in his Department, the corrective action project, which is to address the emissions gap pre-2030 as well as post 2030? If the Government is to effectively try to bring us on track in the transport sector pre-2030, this has to be published soon so those actions can start to be implemented and can take place. Has the Minister engaged with his officials on this project? Does he have any sense of the recommendations for new, extra measures, that this will bring forward? Does he have any sense of when that document will be published?”
“Over Christmas, the Minister raised the white flag on our 2030 emissions targets four years ahead of schedule. One of the areas where Ireland continues to struggle is the emissions from our transport sector. The NDP sectoral plan the Minister published in November referenced the corrective action modelling project that the Department of Transport is leading to try to tackle the gap in our transport emissions. When does the Minister expect to publish that work?”
“Particularly in those parts of my constituency, and the Minister and I were at the opening of many of those homes, I know that many people cannot get into town because the bus routes are inadequate. That is why we have to fight for new services as well as improved capacity on existing services.”
“For my part, I will always fight for new bus services and public transport routes around the country. I brought in a question earlier specifically about the N8, a new service we have desperately needed for years and that has been pushed back. I am glad that the Minister is going to intervene, and we look forward to seeing that delivered this year. I think about the growth of housing around our city and brand new estates in areas like Tyrrelstown, Hollywoodrath and Kilmartin Grove. These are entirely new estates in places that were fields two or three years ago. Those areas need new services. It is not always enough to say we have boosted the existing services, because there are brand new areas that have been created.”
“To be clear, the NTA is saying this is not an infrastructural issue, but a funding issue. Funding is key to the decision about whether Galway gets its new BusConnects system. I am concerned that gap in funding for new services identified by the Minister's officials is the blockage for BusConnects in Galway.”
“The Minister has set out the size and, in his own words, the unprecedented current expenditure allocation for 2026. I am concerned it only gives him enough to maintain existing levels of services. That seems to be backed up by what his officials said. The minutes of the management board meeting were quoted in the paper: "The allocation, while substantial, will not allow for new services to be delivered" in 2026. For example, on the BusConnects programme for Galway city, the NTA said in 2023 that Galway's new bus network was scheduled for 2025 to 2026. However, when I contacted the NTA in November last year, it said that the new bus network in Galway city was currently scheduled to commence implementation in 2027 to 2028, subject to operational readiness and confirmation of funding.”
“The Minister's answers are consistent but unfortunately they are not consistent with what the NTA told me last week. The Minister is saying the NTA service plan for the year is coming to him. That is great. Is the Minister going to go through that? Can he commit to us here that he is going to say to the NTA that 2027 is not acceptable and that he wants the N8 delivered in 2026? It is clearly flagging what is coming in on its service plan to the Minister. It is going say 2027, a further delay for Dublin 15 commuters. Is the Minister able to commit that he will say to the NTA that is not acceptable and the N8 orbital link has to be delivered in 2026?”
“It is not fair to the commuters who want to get to the airport, or the workers in Dublin 15 who work there. The constant chopping and changing of this deadline is not fair either.”
“I will give the Minister a bit of a history of the delays with the N8. I wrote to the NTA in August of 2024 and was told the N8 would be launched in 2025. In April 2025, when I enquired with the NTA about where it was at, I was told it would start in quarter 2 of 2026. In September of last year the Minister said in this Chamber that it could potentially be introduced "within the next year. To be clear, next year, that is, by the end of 2026". That is what the Minister said in September. I wrote to the NTA over Christmas and got a reply on 5 January this year which says that it currently anticipates implementation of phase 9 and specifically the N8 to be in 2027, subject to funding and operational readiness. The Minister has said 2026; that is not what the NTA is telling me. It has obviously assessed a longer timeframe.”
“Blanchardstown is about 14 km away from Dublin Airport and yet we have not had a direct bus route linking the two since 2010. We have heard a number of commitments that this route, the N8 under BusConnects, would be delivered. However, we are now told that the route has been pushed back until 2027. Is it because of a lack of funding that the N8 orbital route from Blanchardstown to Dublin Airport is not being delivered in 2026, as had been committed to?”
“At a time when we are being told there are safeguards being built into the Mercosur agreement, the actual EU law that could make a difference has been postponed for yet another year and we have no guarantee that we will see it implemented next year. This shows me that this deal does not have the adequate safeguards for the environment that we have been told it has.”
“Indeed, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael MEPs and their respective European parties recently delayed the introduction of a vital law that would protect the Amazon rainforest, namely, the EU's deforestation regulation. This law would have forced EU companies to carry out proper due diligence to ensure they are only selling products that are absolutely guaranteed to be from non-deforested land. That law was first written in 2023. Its implementation was initially delayed from 2024 until the end of 2025. However, just six weeks ago, Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael MEPs voted against its immediate implementation and have pushed back its implementation yet one more year. The Irish Government and other governments failed to stop this.”
“After two decades of negotiation, the Mercosur agreement looks like it is a done deal for Europe. It is a bad deal for Irish farmers but it is a disaster for the environment in a world that needs to protect its Amazon forest green lung and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. A central issue here is how increased demand for South American beef for export to the EU markets is going to create a demand for more land and more cattle, resulting in more jungle being felled and cleared to make way for poor-quality grazing land. If we are to listen to some of the supporters of this deal, we are told the protracted negotiations have led to a fairer outcome and sufficient safeguards to protect our environment. However, I do not see those safeguards.”
“I have regularly raised with the Taoiseach the need to strengthen our social media regulation. Recently we have witnessed the proliferation online of sexualised images of children and women made using X's Grok AI tool. This has to be a wake-up call for taking action against the further debasing of the online space. No society should stand for the targeting of people - children - like this. Does the Government believe the generation of non-consensual intimate images and child sexual abuse images by the Grok's AI tool on X is a criminal offence? If it is not a criminal offence, will the Government take steps to criminalise it?”
“I ask the Taoiseach to address the point as to whether the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, will meet with the Climate Change Advisory Council to understand why it thinks the Government's storm preparedness plans are not good enough.”
“Absolutely, community supports are important and need to be improved but the Taoiseach has not addressed the issue of getting power back to people as quickly as possible and making sure we are resourced to do that. Last January, the strongest critique of Government's failure after Storm Éowyn was not getting power back to people quickly enough. In Mayo, 43,000 people lost power at the height of the storm; seven days later, 17,500 were still without power. In Galway, it was even worse: 59,000 people lost power on the day and seven days later 31,000 were still without power. That is why it is so important we have mutual aid agreements so we can get more engineers on the ground more quickly to help the ESB address those power outages.”
“The advisory council stated that there is no clear costings for activities within the plans, no indication of investment needs and no clear commitment of available funding to support implement. It has even asked that the Minister for climate attend one of its meetings to engage with it on this matter. As we approach the one year anniversary of Storm Éowyn, can the Taoiseach tell me when the electricity supply (amendment) Bill will come before this House for debate? Will he ensure that mutual aid agreements with EU electricity networks are rapidly put in place? Will he commit that the Minister, Deputy O'Brien, will meet with the Climate Change Advisory Council to hear why it feels the Government's plans to deal with severe weather events are not good enough?”
“The Government's review of Storm Éowyn identified trees in private forestry plantations falling on power lines as a significant cause of outages. It set out that the laws governing the obligation to maintain corridors around power lines are inadequate and in July the Cabinet gave approval for the drafting of the electricity supply (amendment) Bill to put electricity corridors on a statutory footing but in December when I asked the Minister for climate when the Bill will be before the Dáil, he was not able to give me a date. It is not just me raising concerns about how prepared we are for the next major storm. Over Christmas RTÉ reported that the Climate Change Advisory Council was extremely disappointed by the sectoral adaptation plans to deal with extreme weather events approved by the Taoiseach's Government in November.”
“As extreme weather events become more frequent and more destructive due to climate change, we need to strengthen our emergency services and resource those who repair critical infrastructure to respond rapidly and effectively. One of the key elements of responding to a major storm is the ability to get engineers from other countries on the ground quickly to help restore power. While we have a mutual aid agreement with the UK, we do not have them with European providers. I raised this lack of mutual aid agreements with European networks with the Taoiseach last October. I met ESB Networks last month. While it is actively negotiating mutual aid agreements with the European networks, they are still not in place. This is one year after Storm Éowyn.”
“I wish the Taoiseach a happy new year. On the 24th of this month we mark the one-year anniversary since Storm Éowyn, the strongest storm ever experienced here, hit Ireland. Over 800,000 homes were left without power and over 100,000 without water. This had an enormous impact on families, farms and businesses. Tens of thousands of homes waited over a week before basic services were restored to them. In the wake of the storm the Department of housing and ESB Networks set out separate assessments of the State’s preparation, its response and what lessons can be learned for the next storm of this size and there will be more storms like this.”