Today at last and after an unnecessarily long break, we have arrived at the first Leaders' Questions session of this new Government term. I want to raise the emergency situation affecting communities all across this island, that is, the ongoing fallout from Storm Éowyn. At the outset, my thoughts and those of my Labour Party colleagues are with all those families and households that have been so severely impacted by the storm. Many households are still continuing to suffer the consequences of the storm itself along with the weakened infrastructure and insurance and cost implications they are now facing into the future. I am sure all of us agree that our thanks go to the front-line workers who have been working tirelessly to restore power and water supplies to communities, often in dangerous conditions. People from affected communities have a multitude of justified concerns about the Government's response to the crisis. They speak with one voice when they say they need help. They have been really severely impacted. I have heard from families who were tragically forced to wake their dead relatives by candlelight, from parents unable to cook a hot meal for their bored and cold young children, from older people left terrified and isolated by power outages and fallen trees, from people with chronic health conditions whose appointments were cancelled or they could not access them. I heard today from one family in Roscommon who are still without power and will likely remain so until this coming weekend. They say they have had no electricity, heat or water since 24 January. This has been the case four times now in the last ten weeks. They ask what the Government is going to do about this. They need greater supports, as do all those affected. They cannot afford the financial cost the ESB is now saying it may pass on to all consumers to cover the cost of repairs. This is especially wrong at a time when the ESB is reaping operating profits of nearly €500 million.

It is projected that Ireland will face more frequent weather disasters as global temperatures rise. We are already witnessing more regular awful weather events such as hurricane Ophelia and storms Babet, Darragh and Eunice in recent times.

More storms, freezes and floods are likely, due to climate change, which will bring more disruption and more damage. There is a careful balancing act. We must take decisive climate action to play our part in mitigating climate chaos but we must also build real resilience against inevitable weather disasters by building up security in our energy sector, our water systems, our broadband and our transport networks. We must ensure the necessary transition to cleaner energy will not leave communities behind. The first national climate change risk assessment will be published soon by the EPA and will help us better to understand how to adapt our infrastructure.

What will the Government do on behalf of the families and households we have all heard from to protect our infrastructure and to support struggling households trying to cope now with the aftermath of the storm and struggling to meet bills? What urgent supports will it provide to communities to restore infrastructure?

Stoirm uafásach a bhí ann, is dócha an ceann is measa a bhí againn riamh. Níl aon amhras faoi sin. Caithfimid a bheith an-bhuíoch do gach éinne a thug cabhair agus tacaíocht do dhaoine ar fud na tíre. This was a severe, unprecedented storm, the likes of which we have not witnessed in living memory. It caused widespread devastation throughout the country, particularly along the western seaboard and in the north west of our country. Many people have suffered a lot during this period because of power outages, lack of water and, very worryingly for many people, the collapse of the communications network as a result of the ferocity of the wind and the storm itself. It was the worst storm, I would say, in a century.

The first priority of all involved in planning and of the national co-ordinating group was to protect lives. Unfortunately, we had one fatality in Kacper Dudek. There could have been many more. The red alert warning was effective and impactful, and we should never lose sight of that. There are issues we have to re-evaluate in respect of how we do the red, orange and yellow system. That is under way.

In terms of the grid, I have already taken action. I met with the Minister for climate, the Department and the Tánaiste. I asked, and it is happening, that we accelerate the grid infrastructure capital plan and bring elements forward. We want that done within the next month in order that we move very fast to make the grid more resilient. I agree that the severity of storms and the frequency of such severe storms is only going to increase. In fact, if we look at the figures over the past 20 years, there is a dramatic increase in both the volume and severity of storms. We have to make our country more resilient. That will mean substantial funding for adaptation in the updated national development plan, which we need to do far more on across the board. In respect of the grid, there are some practical things we can do very quickly. We have to cut through a lot of regulatory frameworks to enable us to do that in terms of proper corridors for the grid, where we do not have trees and forests impacting on the grid as they did in this particular storm. Human safety and health have to be the priority. That is going to happen in respect of the grid.

In respect of water, and I will be meeting with the utility companies in this respect, it was not good enough that Irish Water did not have generators in place at all locations. That is now happening and the same situation will not happen again.

Thank you, Taoiseach.

I will say more on that if I get a chance.

We all appreciate just how ferocious this storm was. I join with the Taoiseach in expressing sympathy to the family of the young man, Kacper Dudek, so tragically killed. It is simply unacceptable, however, that we still have 18,000 homes, farms and businesses without power so many days on from the outbreak of the storm. It is clear that much more urgent action is necessary from the Government to invest the money we in the Labour Party called on it to invest in the grid. We called for investment of some of the Apple moneys in building up the grid so that we would build in that resilience.

There is also the issue of the lack of supports for households. One constituent told me that she recalls during Covid how swiftly funding was put in place for the hospitality industry to be able to serve outside, just for example. Why do we not see funding available from the Government to provide those in the most affected areas with support to put in place measures to mitigate against inevitable future power outages?

These include the generator supplies that the Taoiseach mentioned and the sort of emergency backup facilities that were so sadly lacking in many of the most affected areas. What we want to hear today from the Taoiseach is a clear outline of substantive measures that can be put in place now to support families.

There are 3,000 ESB Networks crew members, with crews from the UK, France, Finland, Germany, Austria, Norway and the Netherlands. I thank all of the 3,000 people involved in all of those crews. We can say “Do it faster" but they have been working day and night since the storm began. There is no additional capacity other than what is there in those 3,000 crew members. I think we have to pay a very strong, sincere tribute to the crews of ESB Networks and all those crews who came from overseas to help us in what was the worst storm in living memory.

In the last framework for ESB Networks, the cost of the capital investment from 2020 to 2025 was about €5 billion. The estimate is that we have to go to €13 billion in the next five years. That is the level of change and investment that will be required to make our grid resilient. I am determined to do that, and this Government is determined to do that, and we will work with Deputy Bacik if she has any additional ideas in that regard.