Storm-hit Irish towns are taking climate action into their own hands
On January 24, Ireland was hit by the record-breaking Storm Éowyn, at its peak leaving 768,000 homes, farms, and businesses without power, and 130,000 without water.
The damage was so severe and widespread that the ESB had to call in almost 700 crew members, coming from Britain, Austria, France, Germany, Finland, Norway, and Northern Ireland.
"We have never had to call in that kind of assistance before," said regional manager at ESB Networks Siobhán Wynne.
The recovery efforts meant the ESB had to replace over 3,700 electricity poles, 700km of conductor wire, and 800 electricity transmitters.
Uisce Éireann, which uses electricity to pump water, was greatly affected by the power outages and is set to buy 100 of its own generators to avoid such a pitfall in future storms.
But by February 8, 16 days after the storm, there were still 3,500 Irish homes without access to electrical power.
The question now being posed is: "Can Irish communities, especially rural ones, become more self-sufficient?"
We speak to two such communities in Cork and Leitrim who are doing exactly that and look at two villages in the Netherlands and Germany who achieved self-sufficiency from the grid.
In modern-day Ireland, what does it feel like to be totally without water and electricity for 13 days straight? Especially when you are in the depths of winter and there are newborn babies to feed and elderly people who need to keep warm?
"I can say we felt we were on our own. There wasn't someone coming to us saying: 'Here's a plan'. We had to highlight who was needing help in our locality, there was no one coming to us," says Matt Conlon, of Killargue Community Development Association, in Leitrim.
Leitrim was one of the worst hit places by Storm Éowyn, but not only that, the lack of State-level response left many in the community feeling totally forgotten.
"After Éowyn, the hangover for us is that Leitrim is the forgotten county. The next storm will come and the same thing will happen again. The feeling is Leitrim is only here for the conifer trees," says Matt, who acts as the vice treasurer of the Killargue Community Development Association.
The group is run by the community for the community and has its own centre in a former church, however, it too was without power for a week so was unable to provide assistance to the community.
Things were so bad in the area that Matt and his wife took to driving around the area to see who exactly was without power and who was most vulnerable.
"We relied on word of mouth to see who needed help. There was no government level plan asking: 'Who needs assistance?'" explains Matt.
When the local county council did provide care packs — which included a sleeping bag, a light, a carbonated drink, reading material, and a hat and gloves in some — the locals in Killargue used their power-less community centre as a distribution hub.
When they had no water, they had to reach out to a hub in nearby Dromahair for supplies for their own locality.
As a result of the vacuum in immediate State-led support, this community is now taking things directly into their own hands.
Top of their priority list is a generator for the community centre, which they have already priced at €10,000 to €12,000, and they have already applied for not one but two grants for. The grant applications are not with a State body, they have applied to the National Lottery and a private windmill company that supplies energy locally.
The community in Killargue never wants to find themselves in this position again, and want to be able to use their community centre as a hub for heat and water for the next storm.
On Monday, February 24, exactly one month on from Storm Éowyn, a monster meeting was held in the Killargue community centre, attended by local councillors and some TDs.
Forestry is a big issue in Leitrim due to the density of manmade for-profit forests there and the height of some of these trees, which wipe out metres of electrical lines when a storm hits.
"The reason we were out for so long is that 300-400m of electrical wires, like an entire section between poles, were wiped out by fallen trees. So the ESB then needed to get forestry equipment in, multiple poles and then to restring.
Between organising public meetings and hopefully accessing funds for a public generator, Matt hopes these actions show their community that "there are people here to help and support them, if we work together as a group".
"We can't let it sit, we can't live with this, especially when we live in 2025. Water and electricity is not something we should be cutting off from anybody," says Matt.
- See: Killargue World Community Group on Facebook
After Storm Frank in late December 2015 and Storm Babet in October 2023, the people of flood-hit Midleton are doing it for themselves.
While a flood relief scheme has been — and continues to be — worked on for the town and surrounding areas, it was the “weather bombs” from Babet that inspired a 20-strong group of volunteers to take the town’s safety into their own hands.
Actions include the successful lobbying of TDs and ministers, daily monitoring of water levels in the Dungourney and Owenacurra rivers, the distribution of water leak detection kits, clinics to help locals fill out forms for State support schemes and, in the future, the development of a local support system to help people erect their own flood barriers in times of weather warnings.
All of these actions have been self-funded and organised by the members of Midleton and East Cork Flood Protection Group.
Having experienced devastating floods at Christmas 2015, with many homes affected, it was Storm Babet that spurred this group into serious action eight years later.
“What makes Midleton complicated are the two rivers,” says Caroline Leahy from the group. “The tide affects the Dungourney and the heavy rain affects the Owenacurra. There is a history of some estates having been flooded from ground water from the rain.”
Caroline explains how the community was told that Babet was a “once-in-a-300-year event”, this “weather bomb” or “lashing of rain in a short period of time”.
However, she says there had been quite a wet number of weeks leading up to Babet — meaning the banks of the river were already heavily saturated and, by the time Babet’s rain arrived, the “river couldn’t cope”.
In the space of 15 minutes, her own home was three feet under water. When the water went down, there was a couple of centimetres of silt from the river covering the downstairs of her home. Approximately 400 properties were affected in the surrounding area.
The group met for the first time in November 2023, because “there hadn’t been anything done”, and met again in January 2024 as a sort of “therapeutic group”.
The group then started thinking about what could be done, which led to petitions being set up in local shops, 15,000 signatures being gathered, and a community galvanising into self-help style action.
“That helped people because they knew there was a group that would rally together, standing up for them I guess. We presented it to the Dáil, tried to speak to as many TDs as possible, and gave statements on the trauma and impact of it,” says Caroline.
The trauma relates to what will happen next time, and how quickly, due to the 15-minute flooding window in Babet.
When there is any rain, or a weather warning, the question on many people’s minds is: “Are we safe here or do we need to act?”
One way they have found to navigate this worry is by measuring the levels of water in the rivers, both from in-person monitoring and by reading data online that comes from gauges in the rivers.
“One river gauge has been there for a long time, so there is a lot of historical data about how the river behaves that we can use and there are other newer ones.
“On a wet day, where there is not a warning, you can find your river gauge on this online map and you’re able to see the grass and where the river is peaking.
“On a weather warning day, it updates every 15 minutes, so we can now compare that with historical data and know whether another Babet is coming,” Caroline says.
They now share all of this information on their public Facebook group.
To complement this river gauge monitoring, one member watches the precipitation forecast.
“If there was 40mm of rain on Sunday and the river can take 40mm or it may overtop, we then know: ‘Right, the river can hold x metres of height,’” she adds.
Other actions the group has taken include engaging an engineer and coming up with a list of “possible interim measures” should there be another Babet. When the local council formed the Midleton Flood Committee in January 2024, the group successfully lobbied to get two seats at that table.
More recently, actions have included a clinic at the local GAA hall. The Government announced a funding scheme for “individual property protection” in October 2024, meaning they would fund flood barriers at the doors of qualifying people’s homes.
People had a month to apply. The clinic in the GAA hall was to make sure anyone who qualified applied correctly and on time.
The group also hosted a coffee morning in Wallis’ Bar, where people were talked through various tips and tricks needed in the event of another Babet.
These included following the river gauge, having a flood bag at the ready — including vital medication — and a balloon to place in a toilet to stop flooding. They also bought dozens of water leak detector kits for the community.
“You put them on the inside of your front door and back door, and they work like a smoke alarm if there is water at a certain height inside your property,” says Caroline.
So what is next?
The local council has carried out some of the interim measures the group asked for and the flood barriers are on their way, they are told. However, “we have concerns about people not being able to install these barriers as they are very heavy,” says Caroline.
How they work is by two permanent fixed rails at an external door and then, when there is a weather warning, you slot long aluminium panels into the rails with a nut and bolt.
The group is concerned about “an elderly person, or if someone is pregnant, or has a disability, or a person living alone — as, a lot of the time, they will need two people to install. So we are working on a plan for a community support system,” she adds.
“One of the great things that came out of Babet was the community response, corporate donations for cleaning, weeks of food donations at our doors — not from the State, that was all volunteers and donations from local businesses, the scouts, and school kids doing cleaning. We want to harness that again if we do need to get barriers up for people so there isn’t another Babet. One of the other things we would like to do is to try to get in front of the minister for social protection to explain the pitfalls of the humanitarian scheme,” she adds.
- See: Midleton and East Cork Flood Protection Group on Facebook.
Known as Aardehuizen [Earth houses], these homes are dome shaped and feature lots of glass panelling — as each property is south-facing for temperature-control purposes.
There are solar panels on the roofs, and they also have solar collector plates and electric boilers in the houses to meet energy demands.
Instead of these houses all working as separate units, the village works as a microgrid, whereby power is distributed across the 23 homes.
Critically, their grid is decentralised. It allows them to be “off-grid”, and it means they still have power during outages or public utility failures.
A recent estimation showed that Aardehuizen can produce 32% of the total energy it uses, but it has potential to supply 90% of its own needs.
The German settlement of Feldheim, meanwhile, is totally self-sufficient.
With 130 inhabitants, this village — around 90 minutes to the south of Berlin — has been “energy independent” for more than a decade.
In the mid-1990s, a number of wind turbines were erected to provide electricity to Feldheim.
There are now 55 silent wind turbines situated on the nearby hills and a local grid has since been built, with locals installing solar panels and battery storage systems.
The village receives thousands of visitors every year to see this community in action.
Local mayor Michael Knape said having locals as key stakeholders was key to the project’s success.
Mary Mulvey works in sustainability, drives an electric vehicle, and lives in a 100-year-old house in Leitrim — so when the country began talking about the incoming Storm Éowyn in January the climate consultant felt prepared.
Only this storm was different.
“Living close to the Atlantic Ocean, you’re used to storms and we can be without electricity for usually two or three days, but in the last few years it’s been four or five days,” says Mary, pictured right.
However, Leitrim was one of the places worst hit by Storm Éowyn, leaving many without power or water for two weeks or more.
“I was working away in Galway and I knew the storm was coming; we had everything battened down but my biggest concern was my polytunnel,” says Mary.
As a Leitrim resident, she is now so accustomed to life-interrupting storms that she relies on Carlow Weather and several maritime apps to keep her accurately informed, as well as several of her own storm kit items.
For Storm Éowyn, Mary had a Kelly kettle to hand (used by fishermen on Lough Corrib and people out working on the bog) as it can boil water with just a few lit twigs as a heat source. Mary also had a camping stove and lots of firewood.
Used to storms, she has a battery-powered radio in her home, so Mary made sure to have lots of rechargeable batteries for that and her flash lights.
“Storms are a regular occurrence for us so you’d have a big box of candles too, but when you’re on day four or five, you get through them,” says Mary of the length of time she was without power during Storm Éowyn.
Aside from the candles, Mary ended up going through four canisters of gas for her camping stoves due to the length of the electricity outage in Leitrim.
She also works remotely and had an offer of a bed in her cousin’s house, but the water supply went in that house.
“Uisce Éireann needs electricity to pump the water [aside from short outages where gravity can feed flow],” says Mary. “So losing electricity and water was a double whammy for people.”
According to the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Uisce Éireann is the “largest consumer of energy in the State and depends heavily on electricity to maintain service”.
However, for Mary, it was not the electrical outage nor the resultant water outage that was the hardest thing for her to contend with, it was the breakdown in communication networks.
“No electricity for five days was hard but to not have a phone, no mobile coverage for the best part of five days, was actually harder and I had to drive into Sligo to get a few messages out, into the McDonald’s in Sligo town,” says Mary.
McDonald’s in Sligo town became a hub for the people of Leitrim.
“There were people getting takeaway food and trying to use the internet there,” says Mary. “In our local community the hairdresser let us come in and use phones and get hot water. A few homes that had power made hot dinners.
Mary eventually had to leave Leitrim and go to family in Meath in order to work.
She is also aware of families with young babies who had to move home to their parents’ houses in different parts of the country as they were unable to prepare food for the infants.
Mary knows this is not the last time her community will come under pressure due to climate change, and for the next storm there will be a few tweaks made in her storm plan.
“I think I was prepared,” she says. “I saved the polytunnel but it did come under pressure and I’ll get brass screws, not nails, next time. I’ll get more camping gas, as I went through so much, and I’ve already bought more matches and candles. “Because I work in climate change, I thought: ‘Oh this is what they’re talking about.’ ”
Check out the Irish Examiner's WEATHER CENTRE for regularly updated short and long range forecasts wherever you are.
