Tánaiste Simon Harris says comments from Paddy Hayes were ‘extraordinarily insensitive’
ESB Claire Byrne programme earlier in the week that the costs of the storm would likely end up in higher charges.
In a statement on Friday, Mr Hayes said: “I can only imagine the hardship for customers who have been without electricity for many days in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn and my heart goes out to them. Mr Hayes said the damage done to the network was the worst ever experienced by the ESB with 788,000 customers left without power, a third of the network. This compared to 385,000 customers without power after Storm Ophelia in October 2017. The cost of that storm amounted to a one-off payment of €7 per customer from October 2018.
“It worries people, and I don’t want any person to be worried about the cost of heating the home, cost of turning on the lights. Meanwhile, the Taoiseach told reporters in Cork that the Government aims to double the investment in electricity networks over the next five years to some €11 billion with a view to making it more capable of withstanding the sort of the high winds that caused the outages last month.
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