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TAOISEACH ENDA KENNY has been accused of using “scare tactics” and making “unwarranted and unfair” claims after he linked the erection of controversial electricity pylons to the emigration of young people.
Kenny was speaking in Saudi Arabia yesterday amid ongoing controversy over Eirgrid’s plans to erect new electricity pylons carrying overhead power cables in many rural parts of the country.
The consultation process for the project closes today and Kenny told reporters: “It’s ironic in many ways that some people say to me: ‘Well, my children have to go away, they have to emigrate’. And in many cases they emigrate to countries where these things are a matter of course as providing infrastructure for development.”
He also said that it is not the right of any government to “deny the next generation of young people in our country the right to have a job and to live and work in their own area if that be so”.
Labour senator John Whelan, who has been strongly critical of the government’s handling of the consultation process, described it as a “gaffe in the Gulf”.
“I can only imagine that the sun in Saudi must have got to Mr Kenny for him to resort to using emigration as a way of influencing the consultation process as it enters its final phase,” he said.
Fine Gael TD Pat Deering said that Eirgrid’s consultation process has been “farcical” and described Kenny’s comments, linking pylon construction and emigration, as “unfortunate”.
He also said that comments earlier this week by Jobs Minister Richard Bruton, who said that the pylons are crucial to regional job creation, are “not factually correct”.
Deering told TheJournal.ie: “There is hope in Carlow for the sugar industry to be reinvigorated and in the event of the sugar factory being re-established it will require a connection to the new power line. But there are no plans for the substation that would be needed.”
Under Eirgrid’s plans, a North-South interconnector would link lines between Meath with Tyrone with a second line linking Kildare to Cork and a third line linking-up Mayo with Roscommon. Ministers argue that the pylons – to be built as part of three projects – are needed to service the grid and for the creation of jobs and infrastructure.
Labour senator Denis Landy warned that industries such as tourism and agriculture will be affected by the construction of large pylons in idyllic parts of the country and warned of possible job losses in these industries.
“In order for us to build out our economy we obviously have to have power… as the country grows we can’t have a deficit of power. But there has to be a balance between provision, people’s needs, and the respecting existing communities that we live in,” he said.
He reiterated calls for a cost-benefit analysis of placing the cables underground to be done, with Deering saying there needs to be a “totally independent set of experts” to assess the implications and costs of underground versus overhead.
Landy also said that linking pylon construction and emigration is “unfair, unwarranted and not justified”.
Opposition parties and TDs have also criticised the Taoiseach.
Fianna Fail’s Dara Calleary, a constituency colleague of Kenny, said his comments were “nothing more than scaremongering”.
“It is an insult to democracy and to the intelligence of the Irish people,” he said. “And in this case, it’s a shameful insult to job seekers.”
Sinn Féin senator David Cullinane said the comments are part of a “PR exercise” and said that they “marginalised the concerns of the affected communities”.
Independent TD Mattie McGrath said Kenny’s remarks were “patronising in the extreme”.
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So healthcare workers should have to put their lives at risk when there has been a warning for people to stay indoors? I’m sorry, I don’t think so. Why didn’t the person try to organize family to come or else organize to go to a care facility for the said time? I’m sorry but people were instructed to stay indoors.
@Greeneyes17: I’m sorry but who said healthcare workers should put their lives at risk? I’m sorry but that’s a touch of a straw man.
@Greeneyes17: Well this comment shows your level of ignorance on the topic. First of all most of those people with care packages don’t have family or family close by. Second of all what care facility do you suggest ?,These don’t exist. There are nursing homes for elderly people which are usually are full with waiting lists to get in. There are no care facilities that people can just go to. No one expects people to travel when they can’t but measures have to be introduced for national weather emergencies. Temporary live in carers would be an answer but an expensive one. Bottom line is just not as simple as you say and you should stop blaming the disabled for not being able to look after themselves.
@Greeneyes17: you are missing the point care providers can avail of help from the civil defence and defence force to go to there client in a emergency when code red is declared when the weather is bad
@Catherine Sims: excellent Catherine you go and temporarily live in with a vulnerable client juring the next red weather event????????
The health services and army and Gardai did a great job. But the volunteers in the Civil Defence who are volunteers did a fantastic job, on their own time. Often forgotten.
@Porterkev: “volunteers in the civil degence who are volunteers”…. wow thanks for pointing that out
@Porterkev:
One ambulance had to be dug out 6 times
https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/father-son-ambulance-team-praise-14381478
You know what one of the problems was? Too many people didn’t believe it was going to happen. Look back at the Journal comments. This narrative that joe public knew more than the scientists and meteorologists who have studied these things for years, was common.
@Dermot Lane: The cold bite was always coming but there was an admitted real possibility of Storm Emma changing course a few days before coming to Ireland and diverting from the course of going over any part of Ireland at all.
@Shane Corry: people were saying met E had it wrong the evening it hit because it didn’t come at 4pm On the button
Plans should be put in place for those needing care like mentioned above and halls made available to those who need it.
Spending millions yearly on ploughs etc is not viable once in a decade weather.
@Pilib O Muiregan: Dont agree. A snow plough is just a truck that can be used for other purposes. Just bracket on front 2 hold v shaped piece os steel. snow tires not v expensive.
@gregory: in Warsaw they put ploughs on the front of the bin lorries when it’s snowing.
Im supported by clarecare twice a day. Clarecare told their workers to just go to emergency cases on thurs morning but many workets chose to stay at home. All services in Ennis and surrounding areas were fine up til about 6/7pm that eve. No one checked in on thursday no one checked in on friday Saturday or Sunday ie even a phone call.
There was no contingency plans what would have been really useful was phone contact with people who were vulnerable. Many had no one from Wed to Monday.
Conditions were too bad to travel on friday or Saturday but Alternative plans to check in with people would have been better.
The National Standard, even if this exists…, for burying water pipes underground needs to have the depth increased.
@gregory: there is a national standard but it was ignored during the boom. But it never got cold enough for pipes to freeze, this time.
I think the publicity for the emergency services is over done during the storm. There’s very good stories of great work no doubt but if you’re working in this area it’s just part of the job we don’t need to heap praise in them just pay them more where they should be.
1/2 What will become of people like my brother when they are forced out of their residential centres into dispersed housing in rural communities (where many roads were not even treated during this weather event)? Unlike the people with disabilities who were able to pick up the phone and ring Tom Clonan, my brother now 41, cannot speak, pick up a phone, dial a number, call for help, walk, feed or get himself a drink or change his own nappies – his intellectual age is 6 months to 1 year. Yet ‘disability advocates’ gung ho on independent living and wiping out ‘institutions’ insist even those with severe and profound needs should live an ‘ordinary life’ in an ‘ordinary place’ with ‘no special treatment’ – just because that’s what the majority of people with disabilities want for themselves.
A formal buddy system needs to be set up by HSE for all vulnerable persons where a designated person such as a neighbour can volunteer to check up if a carer doesn’t turn up it. It might simply mean making a quick phone call during the crisis or looking in for 10 minutes.
2/2 Once the HSE’s Time to Move On from Congregated Settings policy is fully implemented, the 76 residents who occupy ten houses (mainly large chalets) on my brother’s beautiful campus will be scattered here, there and everywhere in small houses of 3 or 4 with agency staff coming and going. Whereas during this storm they had a continuation of care thanks to a well staffed campus where nurses and carers could stay with them, in the future they will be in the very position those who contacted Tom Clonan were in this time around. Only unlike them, they won’t be able to call him or anyone. There are people with disabilities who fully rely on others for their survival – leaving cold food & drinks next to my brother’s bed would not work for the same reason it wouldn’t work with an infant.
No mention of other voluntary agencies that have been doing great work, the likes of Order of Malta, St Johns and Red cross, who mobilised vehicles and personnel all over the country during the bad weather! IT’s not just the civil defence you know!
Global warming causing Sudden Stratospheric Warming’s hasn’t really kicked off yet and when it does then these things will get more common and WORSE.
@Alois Irlmaier:
Please define “Global warming causing Sudden Stratospheric Warming’s” as even google struggle with that one.
I fully expect that the Gestapo will issue a curfew for a future weather event.
This will be the inaguration of the new Irish Communist State.
It is up to the government to make sure that there is enough of a supply of crack, mack, cocaine, heroin, alcohol etc for those who refuse shelter.
What a kip of a country, we are great for meddling in other peoples business but cant mind our own, I’m a pensioner &recently got a bill from my electric company for almost a thousand euros? I know I don’t owe that money as I live in a one bed apt & i’m seldom home, the bill was for eighty four days, The company are saying that I do owe the money so I asked them to prove to me that I owe them the money but they haven’t come back to me, My point is that there are a lot of unqualified people in jobs that they are not qualified to be in, In other words they are chancers, God help us & save us from the vultures
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