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Crews from four European countries set to arrive in Ireland to help restore power
Around 180,000 premises currently have no power in the wake of last Friday’s storm.
CREWS FROM FRANCE, Austria, Finland and the Netherlands are travelling to Ireland to help ESB Networks deal with the widespread power outages caused by Storm Éowyn.
Around 180,000 premises currently have no power in the wake of last Friday’s storm, which brought strong winds to Ireland and knocked off power and water supply for thousands.
ESB Networks Regional Manager Siobhan Wynne confirmed this morning that crews from Austria and Finland are arriving in Ireland to supplement crews from the UK that have already landed to try to help with the restoration efforts.
Crews from France and the Netherlands are also due to arrive in the coming days.
Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland, Wynne said: “We have additional crews coming to help us. We’ve had crews from Britain over the course of the weekend that have been deployed in the worst affected areas.
“This morning, we have more crews coming in by ferry from Austria and Finnish crews will be landing in Ireland this morning,” she said.
“We’ve got further crews over the course of the next couple of days arriving from both France and the Netherlands.
“They will be going to Cavan, Monaghan, Westmeath, Longford, Roscommon, Clare, Galway, Donegal, Sligo – all of the worst affected areas.”
Wynne said that the restoration effort is “really difficult given the circumstances we have at the moment and given the number of customers that are without power”.
“We try to prioritise emergency situations and to make situations safe initially, then try to get back the larger groups of customers to make the biggest impact. And so it depends on where you are in the network, as to how long take for us to get power restored to you.
“Our population is quite dispersed in Ireland; we’ve roughly six times the amount of network per customer than most other European utilities, over 160,000 kilometres of overhead network, so that makes us a little bit more vulnerable.
“We are investing, though, a lot of money. We’re investing over €10 billion euro over the next five years in our network to try and reinforce it and renew it and make it stronger.”
