Outrage as hundreds in Leitrim still without power

Noelle Patterson from Carrigallen, a seven-months pregnant mother with a two-year-old, is among those still without power in Leitrim. “We are on day 19,” she said, describing the ongoing hardship. “A chainsaw crew arrived on Sunday, and we got really hopeful, but after two hours, they were like - a machine is needed. So, a digger with one of those heads arrived, and he's working at it. But I don’t know how long it’s going to take.”

Beyond the restoration delays, Noelle shared the financial strain: “So, that's a lot of pressure on the generator. €70 a day is what we're spending on the two generators. My husband goes for the petrol run and fills up the two petrol caddies every evening after work to keep us going.”

She also described the struggle to keep warm: “I have a little stove. It doesn't have a back boiler or anything, but I can keep the kitchen warm, and the chimney of the stove goes up through our bedroom, and that's keeping our bedroom warm. My trick is: keep all doors closed, extra blankets, hot water bottle, fleece pyjamas. And then I have a little two-year-old, so he's in the travel cot in our bedroom.”

Noelle also highlighted the lack of hot water: “I have no hot water, I literally just drive around with a shower bag in the back of the car, trying to get showers wherever we can.”

Gerry Gilroy from Drumsna, who was without power for 16 days, faced difficulties as his wife had just gotten out of the hospital following major surgery. “I needed a generator because my wife, she had a cancer tumor removed. She got out of the hospital the day after the storm. But coming home to a cold house and no light after that is shocking, isn't it?” he said. “I mean, I can't really blame the hospital. They probably thought the power would only be off for a few hours, you know, after a storm, like just a normal sort of mind frame everyone would have. But for two weeks, it was difficult.”

Gerry also faced significant damage to his property. "There were two big spruce trees fell, and one of them was like two meters in diameter. It was absolutely massive. The council came out and they were waiting for the ESB to come to make the cables safe before they cut it, but eventually they did get to it after a few days."

The prolonged outage forced his family to rely on costly solutions. "It was very difficult buying takeaways and trying to get hot meals. Despite applying for the HAS1 humanitarian relief fund, Gerry found the compensation inadequate. "There's three of us in the house, so they gave us 150 for a couple and 100 for my son, so we got 250 back. That doesn't cover your 700 diesel bill, does it?" he remarked. "The way I look at it is I'm grateful everything's back to normal now. There are still over a thousand people without power, so I'm lucky to be one of the people in Leitrim that has it now."

He acknowledged that without the generator, the situation would have been even worse. "If we didn’t have the generator, we would have had to move out, especially the way my wife was. She'd just had a major operation. We'd have to book in somewhere warm for the two weeks, and that would have been even more costly."

"The numbers without power in Leitrim are currently in the low hundreds, in the Carrick-on-Shannon district," said Paul Hand, ESB Networks Press Officer, as the company continues its extensive efforts to restore power to affected areas following the recent storm.

More than two weeks after the storm wreaked havoc on the electricity grid, ESB Networks has successfully restored power to over 767,000 homes, farms, schools, and businesses. However, hundreds of customers in Leitrim remained without electricity the longest, with full restoration still ongoing in some cases.

Following significant repair work over the weekend, efforts are continuing into the night, with fewer than 700 customers expected to be without power overnight. Restoration work will resume at first light tomorrow.

The worst-affected areas include parts of Roscommon, North Galway, Mayo, and South Leitrim.