DUBLIN –
The State will distribute a “household resilience” booklet to every household in the coming weeks and has issued formal guidelines to local authorities to identify and prepare Community Support Centres (CSCs) to provide essential services during major outages, measures that shift operational and capital demands onto local government, utilities and the supplier market for backup power and emergency equipment.
The package-prepared by the Office of Emergency Planning in the Department of Defence and prompted by the review of Storm Éowyn, which struck on January 24, 2025-sets out household checklists for coping without power, water and communications for up to 72 hours and establishes a template for CSC facilities that local authorities are now being asked to operationalise. Councils began seeking expressions of interest from premises operators before Christmas and are to finalise the lists shortly.
The measures carry direct budgetary and procurement implications for councils, the national water utility and private suppliers of generators and electrical services, and they form part of a sequence of regulatory responses the Government says will include new statutory powers for vegetation management around electricity infrastructure. They also sit alongside the existing national emergency framework overseen by the National Directorate for Fire and Emergency Management under the Department of Housing, which coordinates the State’s response to severe weather and major incidents.
Operational requirements and liabilities for Community Support Centres
Local authorities have been provided detailed guidance on what premises may be designated as CSCs and what upgrades and capabilities are expected if a facility is to be called into action in a prolonged outage. In practice, councils are expected to draw on community halls, sports clubs and parish centres that can be brought to a common minimum standard.
Requirements listed in the guidance include:
- a large main room with tables and chairs;
- a kitchen or food-preparation area and ample toilets;
- reliable wifi and provision for extension leads and device charging;
- accessibility for people with mobility difficulties and a separate room for nursing mothers or medical conversations;
- ideally adjacent car parking, a smoking/vaping area and an electric vehicle charging point;
- the ability to operate independently of the grid, either through an on-site generator or a changeover switch to accept a mobile unit; the centres are not intended as overnight rest facilities.
The guidelines state that local authorities will cover the cost of hiring electricians to install changeover switches and will supply generators, but that funding “may be” available for other costs if a CSC is activated. Owners and operators are required to operate under their own public liability insurance, with councils responsible for agreeing activation protocols and reimbursement terms in advance.
These stipulations convert previously improvised community responses during storms and flooding into a more formalised service model, with explicit responsibilities for capital works, contract management and insurance held at the premises level rather than centrally. For operators, the trade-off is clearer recognition within local emergency plans in return for meeting specified technical and governance standards.
Utilities, suppliers and the supply chain
The review that prompted the guidance highlighted the systemic knock-on effects from Storm Éowyn-at its peak 768,000 homes and businesses were without power-on mobile-phone towers, broadband, water and wastewater treatment plants. The source material records that 286 water-treatment plants and 293 wastewater treatment plants were out of action for some period during the storm and its aftermath, with uncontrolled releases of untreated wastewater occurring in places and boil notices issued for affected supplies.
Uisce Éireann has increased its stock of standby and mobile generators and is working to make more plants generator-ready, and it is reviewing its fleet of all-weather vehicles to position capability where most needed. The company said:
“All of these actions will ultimately enhance our ability to manage storm events and provide more resilient water and wastewater services, supporting customers and protecting the environment,” a spokesperson said.
The practical effect is heightened demand for portable generation, changeover switch installations and short-term hire of electrical contractors. That demand touches manufacturers and rental firms in the genset market as well as electrical contractors and logistics providers responsible for transport and installation in adverse conditions. The prominence of generator readiness in the guidance gives procurement officers in councils and utilities a clear near-term purchasing priority and signals to suppliers that public-sector buyers will favour equipment compatible with standardised changeover and safety requirements.
The source also documents international mutual-aid activity during the response: engineers from the French distribution operator Enedis worked as part of an international response team to repair damaged power lines on January 30, 2025, alongside technicians from other European network operators. That mobilisation underlines how Ireland’s critical infrastructure restoration is increasingly embedded in cross-border operational assistance arrangements.
Regulatory measures and fiscal exposure
Beyond immediate operational measures, the Government has signalled legislative action to reduce recurrence by introducing a bill to establish “forestry corridors” and enhance vegetation management around power lines. The Government said the legislation will include “powers to clear vegetation likely to interfere with the network and a statutory framework for compensation to landowners in respect of the establishment and maintenance of forestry corridors, including regulation making powers for compensation principles, methodologies and dispute resolution mechanisms.”
Those provisions, once drafted and enacted by the Oireachtas, will sit alongside the existing statutory duties of the Commission for Regulation of Utilities and the transmission and distribution system operators under the Electricity Regulation Act 1999, creating a more prescriptive regime for managing trees and commercial forestry near overhead lines. The result will be a new layer of cost-allocation and compensation mechanisms for landholders, and additional compliance and enforcement tasks for the regulator and distribution network operators, who will need to integrate corridor management into network-planning and investment decisions.
For local authorities, insurers and premises operators, the guidance crystallises several points of fiscal exposure: capital costs for changeover and site modifications, potential operating costs when CSCs are activated, and the need for adequate liability coverage on designated premises. Councils will also have to decide whether to ringfence contingency funding for repeated activations in areas hit by recurrent storms, or to rely on wider central-government support in declared national emergencies.
Implications for public-private coordination
The guidance formalises a model in which community premises, volunteer committees and local authorities interact operationally and financially, moving from ad hoc “warm hub” arrangements to a structured network of CSCs that can be integrated into county emergency plans. Volunteer committees may act to activate CSCs on local assessment, but activation is not automatic in any declared emergency; CSCs will be stood up only if deemed necessary by the local crisis-management team, which typically includes senior council officials, Gardaí and health representatives.
For councils, the immediate next procedural step is to finalise lists of willing premises and to procure or schedule electricians and generator deliveries as specified in the guidance. Councils have begun collecting expressions of interest and are to finalise the lists shortly, with several indicating that they will publish indicative CSC locations as part of their severe-weather communications so residents know where they may be directed during a prolonged outage.
For national utilities and private-sector suppliers, the confirmed priorities are generator stockpiling, changeover readiness at critical sites, and positioning of all-weather service vehicles and crews to reduce response times. The Government’s legislative timetable includes drafting the forestry-corridors bill as a priority, which will set out statutory powers and compensation mechanisms for proactive vegetation management. In parallel, emergency planners are expected to cross-reference the new CSC network with telecoms, health and policing plans so that, in the next Storm Éowyn-scale event, community centres are not just powered but integrated into a wider, pre-agreed resilience architecture.