“I felt obliged to write to you having listened to your interview on the Claire Byrne Show earlier this week. I was stunned by your comments, and I know that they have caused great anger among many of your customers.
“It came across to me as if customers should be happy enough to get their power restored and that’d do them, your immediate rejection of any consideration of compensation was tone deaf and utterly unacceptable.
“The idea that customers would have to pay for a service, regardless of whether they get that service or not, in terms of standing charges and PSO levies is absurd. I ask that the standing charges and levy be suspended for all customers left without power for the duration.
“I am also writing to ask you to make goodwill payments to all customers affected and that such payments reflect the length of the outage experienced.
“I understand these power outages were not of the ESB’s making however, the ESB must take responsibility for the lack of resilience of the electricity network/infrastructure and for the failure of the ESB to protect and secure its power lines from trees. We need to see an urgent Action Plan from you on protecting and securing power lines from forestry. This work needs to begin as soon as power is restored to all.
“Your comments that customers can expect increased bills to pay for the damage caused by the Storm, whether this year or next, has caused outrage and with the ESB making hundreds of millions of profit annually and customers here already paying the second highest electricity prices in Europe, it is not fair that more would be asked of them.
“I’d like clarity on what percentage of profits has gone into improving the network over the last decade.
“The very worst of this Storm has been the way in which those on the Vulnerable Customers List (circa 97,000), our most vulnerable people, have been left at sea during this Storm. This Storm has shown us that the Vulnerable Customers List is meaningless during severe weather events. Those reliant on medical devices were not prioritised during this Storm. Our most vulnerable people can never be put in this position again.
“I had a two-year-old with cancer, a young woman in an electric wheelchair among many others reliant on various medical machines whose place on the Vulnerable Customers List meant nothing in the aftermath of Storm Éowyn. I am asking that you provide Generators to those on that List reliant on such machines to live.
“I want to acknowledge the ESB workers on the ground, none of us envy what they had to face into on January 24th and the difficult conditions they continue to work in, especially dealing with forestry. They cannot be thanked enough, and I hope you, as CEO of the ESB will ensure they receive some additional payment as an appreciation.”
