Irish Examiner view: We must act on grid capacity warnings

If the Government is to fulfil its desire to build record numbers of new homes for its people, then investment in energy infrastructure has to take priority. Picture: David Creedon

The phrase ‘stark warning’ often gets dragged out when experts see potential trouble looming for the Government.

Sometimes such warnings are heeded, more often lost in the recesses of a department somewhere — filed away, never to be seen again. Some resonate, some fester, and some are actually heeded but, as the Government relentlessly focuses on the housing crisis, it must not forget the burning need to invest quickly in our electricity transmission system.

As highlighted in these pages yesterday, it is clear the national grid has suffered from massive under-investment and was being run close to its limits.

Ireland’s energy grid has been pushed to its limits, not least during Storm Éowyn, and the huge demand that will be placed on it by the large-scale provision of new housing, may well tip it into collapse.

The power failure across the Iberian peninsula this year — caused by excessive voltage and not a cyberattack — paralysed cities and towns, crippled public transport, shut down the skies and port facilities, as well as telecommunications and banking. Lasting less than 24 hours, it cost the Spanish and Portuguese economies an estimated €1bn.

Ireland cannot afford any such disaster, and if the Government is to fulfil its desire to build record numbers of new homes for its people, then the investment in energy infrastructure has to take priority. Otherwise, little can actually be achieved. The focus here too on building renewable energy resources has not been matched by the construction of infrastructure to support it, and that’s a huge concern.

So too is the need to develop energy storage capacity and the flexibility to respond to unforeseen events.

Government also needs to accept that our ongoing economic growth has to be backed up by energy security. We might not yet have a final report on the cause of the Iberian blackout, but the Government here needs to resource the energy grid fully, so we do not end up with a similar outcome. The stark warnings have been made. They need acting upon.

Now comes the crucial clean-up for Gaza

It has been likened to the rebuilding of a shattered Germany in the wake of the Second World War.

According to a joint report by the United Nations, the EU, and the World Bank, it is going to cost $53.2bn for recovery and reconstruction in Gaza over the next decade, with $20bn required in the first three years alone.

The attempt to undo the destruction the Israeli government has perpetrated on Gaza will take a monumental effort on behalf of the international community, and that work has to start immediately. The replacement of water, energy, and road infrastructure, as well as the rebuilding of hospitals, will have to be kickstarted quickly, along with the restoration of aid corridors to get food to the hundreds of thousands of trapped Palestinians, if further loss of life is to be contained.

Right now, Gaza is little more than a rubble-strewn disaster zone, and rebuilding it will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts in modern history. The thorny issue of who will pay for it remains unanswered.

Since the war began, it is estimated that Israel has dropped an estimated 75,000 tonnes of explosives on the territory; more than 90% of homes and 88% of schools have been destroyed or damaged. The clear-up alone with cost $1.2bn, just over half Gaza’s GDP in 2022, and removing the rubble will be complicated by unexploded ordinance, dangerous contaminants such as asbestos, and thousands of dead bodies.

The unconfined joy created by the release of the remaining hostages and the release of Palestinian prisoners will soon be replaced by the reality of reconstruction and the need to build a new future.

Americans feeling the pinch

As the government shutdown in the US heads into its third week, its full effects on the American economy are only now beginning to hit home with missed paycheques and the absence of billions of dollars of government services now reaching beyond federal workers and stinging the general public.

With US president Trump and the country’s legislators in Congress deadlocked over breaking the impasse, the Oval Office is not getting its desired outcome and Republicans cannot pass the legislation necessary to fund ongoing operations.

The GOP controls Congress but lacks the votes in the Senate to stop Democrat demands that it must cut a deal to preserve health insurance subsidies as part of any agreement to reopen government.

With some 750,000 workers laid off, the effects have caused nationwide flight delays, stalled permit approvals from the Environmental Protection Agency and the Transportation Department, and closed taxpayer helplines at the Internal Revenue Service, and closed access to many national parks.

Some workers deemed essential to state security and protecting government property remain on the job, but have not been paid. With the first wave of missed pay packets now hurting the economies of many communities, the political stand-off is roiling political divisions in Washington, with each side blaming the other for the impasse.

The last government shutdown — a 34-day closure during Trump’s first term in office — shaved $11bn off America’s economic output, according to the US Congressional Budgetary Office.

With already hard-pressed food banks stocking up supplies and community groups telling at-risk clients to warn their lenders of potential missed payments, the American people are going to feel a lot more pain in the coming days.

There is a lot of unnecessary pain being doled out in order to try to demonstrate political strength. Trump might be solving international crises, but he’s not doing much to save America from the gratuitous civil disorder that the shutdown — not to mention his deployment of the military to fight an
imagined enemy within — will inevitably create.

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