'The ESB, sitting on vast profits, tells customers that they will in fact foot the repair bill'

Sinn Féin’s Mary Lou McDonald calls for government intervention as ESB warns of costs rise for customers following Storm Éowyn

An “unsustainable pattern” of one off homes in rural Ireland is partly why it has taken so long to reconnect homes without power after Storm Éowyn, a planning expert has said.

More than a week after the storm, there are still 17,000 homes without power - down from 768,000 in the immediate aftermath.

On Newstalk Breakfast this week, Brendan O’Sullivan of University College Cork’s Planning School said most people are unaware how difficult one off rural homes make building and repairing infrastructure.

“People like me, involved in the planning system, would think about it quite a lot and we’ve looked at it quite a lot,” he said.

“Generally speaking, people don’t think about it as a problem until something like this occurs and people realise this pattern can be very, very inefficient in trying to get essential infrastructure and ordinary, everyday infrastructure to people.

“But it’s one of the things that pops up every now and then when [there’s something] like the storm or flooding issues or perhaps road accidents.”

Mr O’Sullivan acknowledged that making it harder to build one off rural homes would be a “tricky issue politically”, but added that isolated homes throw up all sorts of problems.

“It’s the same for water supplies, for sewerage - it’s an incredibly inefficient pattern,” he said.

“The number of square kilometers of road is way higher than most other European countries.

“So, it’s very, very tricky.”

Despite this, Mr O’Sullivan said local authorities are generally relaxed about one off rural developments.

“Individual houses in the countryside are a form of development that has been supported,” he said.

“So, local authorities might have very good reason to constrain that pattern in some locations - perhaps, say for example, areas that are very beautiful, areas that are on the edge of cities that are sprawling.

“They have less and less control because the sense is that it’s a form of development that is supported generally.”

Going forward, Mr O’Sullivan said such an “unsustainable pattern should at least be acknowledged” and then followed by a “mature discussion” at a national level.

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