OPINION: Five days without power and water in Kildare

“People are blaming the government. Sure what could the government do, they couldn't prevent the storm,” declared the lady, as we discussed the recent fallout from Storm Eowyn.

Having endured almost five days of no power and water in a freezing cold house, I have to say my patience was a bit frayed, if not shredded. The timeline was a also a factor as we had previously been hit with a four day outage during Storm Darragh. That had been fresh in our memory when the lights went out at 11.30pm on Thursday, January 23.

“Well, they could definitely have been better prepared,” I curtly replied, trying to disguise the anger in my voice.

Yes, I probably shouldn't take it out on the lady, and I didn't. But I do take issue with how the government handled the situation.

It was the first time the entire country was under a red weather warning – the highest alert possible. All the experts predicted major infrastructural damage.

Why did the water treatment plants not have back up generators? Why weren't the technical specialists from Austria, UK and Finland put on standby so they could be drafted in sooner? Why were the 17 generators donated from Poland and Denmark not arranged in advance? OK, you could argue, we didn't know what damage would be done, but it was clear extra generators would be needed.

Many hotels in the worst affected areas became community hubs for those hit with power and water outages. Offering showers, places to charge phones, places to congregate in the warmth, and places to eat hot food - they were a godsend for those affected. Clogherinkoe GAA Club provided residents with a place to charge phones, hot drinks and shower facilities. Barberstown Castle, opened its doors on Friday offering use of its generator.

Why couldn't the government have organised designated community hubs in places like community centres. Some areas of Kildare were hit fairly badly with outages, however the West and North West of Ireland were the worst affected areas. If that many people had been without such services in Dublin, there would be war.

As of 12 noon on Thursday, January 30, there were still 583 homes without power in County Kildare.

Fair play to the ESB, who had a mammoth task to return power to an unprecedented 768,000 homes. They put in a massive effort but the semi-state company needs more government support. If these storms are to become common place in Ireland, the politicians need to invest in machinery, and update specialised equipment to access remote areas when the lines go down, be it woodlands, bogs or mountains.

READ: Plans refused for €21.9 million housing development in Kildare

They also need a proper strategy involving the army to ensure vulnerable people cut off in remote areas have access to the community hubs.

To make matters worse, the politicians took an extra week's holidays, and the Dáil remained closed. No wonder, Taoiseach Michael Martin got a frosty reception when he visited some of the areas affected.

Lessons need to be learned from this experience.

Having thrown out all the items in the fridge and freezer for the second time in two months, soggy bags of frozen vegetables and mushy chips, showering in friends' houses, and taking over their washing machines to get school uniforms clean, plugging in slow cookers on their worktops for hot dinners, and dining on take aways, playing endless games of cards, buying bottled water and using rain water to flush toilets, the past week has certainly been an adventure. Thank god for the superserr heater. My own parents were without power for almost an entire week.

However, the lights sparked into action at around 3pm in our house in Rathangan on Tuesday, January 28. Never was I so relieved - that was until we found out that the dog chewed the broadband line, and that's another story!

- Niamh O'Donoghue