Danny Healy-Rae presses for answers on Kerry power outages

Okay, thank you. Next speaker, Danny Hilary. Thank you, Chahilach. I'm glad to get the opportunity and to welcome the witnesses in here. Thank you very much. I know you're all busy in your own areas for communities. I suppose Starramon, as has been said by Deputy Daley, it created a lot of trouble in Kerry. And as we have high areas that were affected with the snow and people couldn't get up there at all in places like Cordell and Glencairn and those places were out of electricity for maybe a week to 10 days, which is too long. And we know government's policy about these new electric heating systems. There was four new houses in one kind of a field together. They didn't have water, they didn't have electricity, they didn't have anything and no one could get up to them. There was more houses separately around the place, but this was one particular example of a family with four new houses. And to say the road was too dangerous for the engineer to let anyone up there to take the snow off it or to spread grit in it, it was too high for that. I suppose my question in relation to the outages, I mean, can you see that happening in places like this, you've Brosnan, you've Knockangashill, you've Ginny Gwila, different high places that always get heat with snow and they seem to go electricity. Is that going to continue or will things improve? The first thing to say maybe is that we have a big investment programme coming over the next five years just overall. The investment in the electricity network, not only for resilience but also for increasing capacity for things like houses, new business connections, for renewable connections, is going to more than double over the next five years, subject to regulatory approval. And there is a big resilience programme as part of that programme on a nationwide basis. Now, if you go to the North Kerry, kind of South Limerick, North Cork area where you're referring to, which was badly impacted by the snow and ice, we have put in a significant investment in that area as well. I think in the region of about two million of investment has gone into that of recent times. But I don't know, Brian, would you want to say a little bit more? But we are working on it. But I think just maybe one last comment before I pass it to Brian to say a little bit more on this, is that we have an overhead line network, 160,000 kilometres of us, and it is at the vagaries of the weather. We do maintain it. We do work on it. I suppose I need to interrupt you because the clock is going down. In relation to trees falling on wires, can you eliminate that now? I mean, there should be no tree within falling distance of a wire or a road. I would like to hear the county manager, his opinion on that, because we hear ads there in the paper of lives being lost because of drink driving. But lives have been lost by trees falling out on roads, and it's to say, when someone is dead, it's immaterial, then, what happened to them or how they were falling out on roads. But there's people being killed on roads. Do you think that there should be trees, all trees eliminated from falling, from the falling distance onto a road or onto a wire? Okay, PSV first, then maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry, Deputy. Yes, so we have as part of the emergency winter programme that we have done. The winter programme that we started just after the storm, we have recruited and procured additional emergency timber cutters. And a part of that programme that they're doing is diseased and damaged falling trees within the range of the line. We've identified the network most affected by recent storms, and these are the areas they're working in. Okay? At the moment, they have identified something close to around 2,000 odd trees, and we expect the number to be about 3,000 odd within the area of the line. But we're only cutting those with the agreement of the local communities and the local landowners. Thank you, Deputy. Look, as I said earlier on, the responsibility for maintenance of hedgerows and trees is the landowners' responsibility. We don't have the capacity or resources to do that. ESP mentioned around the lines. Can I use the opportunity maybe to address that issue I think that you were asking? And to come back to something, Senator, that I didn't answer for you, was the outsourcing piece that you mentioned. What I mean by that is exactly I think what you mentioned, Deputy, is that we engaged with the Agricultural Contractors Association, because they have these large machines, the capability to address and open up roads that you're like, we don't have that standard machinery, we don't have to, because these people have. So we've now got relationships with them. We deploy them in those areas in North Kerry, Limerick, Cork Tip, because I contacted a national, they went to the local reps to get the machinery out. They have them, they're trained and they're skilled in it, and we have those arrangements. And similarly with the forestry contractors in relation to large-scale tree removal and removal of trees. That's the outsourcing I was talking about. Nothing to do with anything, whether or not. Final question. One more question. I should have said at the outset that we wanted to thank the ESP and the local authorities, Kerry and the whole lot, and the volunteers that went out on that. We were lost only for everyone pulling together and working together. But would it be a reasonable task that there should be no tree within falling distance of a road or a wire? That's the case in other countries. There's no tree within falling distance of a road or a wire. I mean, would it be reasonable to ask that question? Okay. Briefly answer, please. Briefly. I'll answer part of that. Cahir, look, if you don't mind. That would be lovely if we could achieve that. But we are at full employment in our timber cutting capacity that we have today and almost in its entirety is deployed on safety clearance of the lines. To cut all diseased and damaged trees within falling distance of all electricity lines will take a ferocious amount of cutters and cost to do that. And I want to say that in the context and to balance what I'm saying about our emergency programme that we have running at the moment on the worst affected areas after the storm. In the context of other utilities, if you take the UK, it's a statutory obligation to clear the lines from safety clearance, similar to what we do, but it's not for resilience clearance of falling distance trees. That's not obligatory. Okay. Briefly, CCMA, if you want. Briefly. Part of the beauty of this country is the trees and going around the roadside. I don't think it would be feasible for us to consider removing every tree that could potentially fall on a road. The bulk of those trees are in great condition. And it's part of, I suppose, what is beautiful about Ireland as a country. And from a climate change point of view and from a nature point of view, we have to protect them as much as possible. Okay. Thank you, Rita Cronin. I suppose we're in... Sorry, Deputy, excuse me. I don't agree with you. Deputy, other speakers. Let us go with the numbers. Let's hear it. Thank you. ... You're welcome. So thank you. Coolest speakers. You do. Could you be asleep in this video too? Yeah, we could wait for a minute. We should leave 25 and 25 years. 18 years. All right. So good. To win.