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.

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.

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. 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?

I thank the Deputy for raising a very important issue and one which is under constant review and attention by the Government. Storm Éowyn was probably the worst storm we ever experienced in terms of severity - wind strength - and it had enormous impacts in terms of power outages and people being without water for quite a considerable period of time.

An overarching review was undertaken by the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management under the Department of housing which focused on a range of areas. Its findings were submitted to the Government on 21 October.

The key recommendations related to humanitarian support, communication with the public, co-ordination of the response, resilience of critical infrastructure and essential services. A number of those measures have been taken in advance of this winter. Community supports centres, for example, were identified as a priority at the start. When I went out and about after Storm Éowyn, the community-based response was mixed. It was particularly strong in some locations and weak in others. We wanted to standardise the response and we wanted a rapid activation of community support centres that would co-ordinate with local authorities to support communities impacted by severe storms. For example, in Donegal on 4 to 6 October, eight community centres were activated in response to Storm Amy. We are improving that area. In addition to that, all those areas will, as soon as the tender is over, have the generators in place so they can respond to the needs of individual households in a given community where a storm might occur.

Likewise, the Department of Transport is working with local authorities and Transport Infrastructure Ireland to confirm winter planning arrangements for all the road networks. Agreements between local authorities and local contractors are now formalised in terms of forestry and agriculture, so they could be stood up quickly for road clearing. The normal routine stuff - sandbags, salt road treatments and so on - has all been well prepared in advance, and likewise with TII. The procurement process for mobile generators had to be entered into by the Department of Rural and Community Development but those generators can now be deployed rapidly when required to support community support centres. There have been a series of ongoing meetings.

One of the issues with Uisce Éireann during Storm Éowyn was there were very few generators in place at many of its facilities. It has now made significant progress on the installation of circa 30 new permanent standby generators.

I will come back in on the legislation.

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.

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.

There are two things on that. I am instructing and driving Ministers to push and push to get many of these issues resolved because of the experience of Storm Éowyn. The legislation has been drafted. On the mutual aid agreements, we had very strong support from Europe, in fairness.

Not quickly enough.

I would not agree, actually.

Thirty-one thousand.

Deputy, this is not a back-and-forth.

Many of them came very quickly to our aid, just as we go their aid. We might not have a formal legal agreement but there are strong informal agreements and they have worked. I do not want to go through the statistics. The impact of that storm was devastating but 70% of customers had their power restored after 72 hours, 90% after seven days and, in 18 days, all remaining customers.

The issue is with the corridors. That is critical. In the future, we should not have a domino effect when trees fall and destroy the power lines. That has been complex and was probably left too long to be worked out between the various players. I am saying, "No more of that". It has to be very clear. We have to protect the grid at all costs.