Minister goes 'f**king mental' at summit over lack of planning since Storm Eowyn
Sources at the summit, co-chaired by Mr O'Donovan and Social Protection Minister Dara Calleary, said he left the building after giving the groups a dressing down.
Storm Eowyn hit on January 24 and 768,000 houses, farms and businesses were cut off from the power supply, while 200,000 had no water.
Telecommunications were also impacted, with 281,100 fixed service users (10%) and 1.8 million mobile service users (30%) affected at its peak.
On May 21, a meeting was held at the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications headquarters on Haddington Road in Dublin. It was attended by Mr O'Donovan, Mr Calleary, and Department of Housing officials. Several groups, including the Commission for Communications Regulation (ComReg), the Telecommunications Industry Ireland of Ibec, and ESB Networks, presented.
According to the agenda seen by the Irish Mirror, each had 10 minutes to present on resilience, preparedness and emergency planning.
Sources said following their talks that Mr O'Donovan was angry as he felt what they had presented 'wasn't good enough' and 'nothing had happened' since Storm Eowyn.
An insider said: 'He told them it was unacceptable. It isn't the Himalayas, it's west Cork.
'He told them they hadn't seemed to have learned anything and if this had happened in Dublin, it would have been a very different response.'
Several sources described Mr Calleary as attempting to be 'diplomatic', with some saying he also expressed frustration with the groups.
One source said the 'fiery meeting' was 'adjourned abruptly'.
It added: 'It was very testy because the ministers wanted to know what had been done since the storm and there wasn't really much by way of an update. Both ministers were fairly annoyed and weren't taking any prisoners.'
Another source added: 'It has been 16 weeks. He went f**king mental.'
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