A former Sinn Fein MP has claimed NIE Networks should be doing more after saying he has been “living in darkness most of the time” without power for the past seven days.
The former Mid Ulster politician Francie Molloy also told the Belfast Telegraph that the suggestion of having people pay for compensation through their bills would be an “insult to injury.”
He is calling for Stormont to do “a lot more” to impose controls on this.
It comes as NIE Networks confirmed there are around 8,000 customers without power across Northern Ireland as of Friday morning – a week out from the beginning of the red alert as Storm Éowyn hit Northern Ireland.
Stormont’s Economy Minister has since confirmed that a decision to compensate NIE customers has been “agreed in principle”, although no details around this have been released.
Sharing his experience, Mr Molloy – who lives in Co Tyrone – told this newspaper: “It’s really a bad situation.
Francie Molloy next to a picture of Michelle O’Neill (Photo by by Peter Morrison)
“From five o’clock in the evening we’re in total darkness except for torches and lamps.
“They [NIE] say that they have meter reader people who go around checking the houses to see how people are but nobody has come here in the whole week.
“I just feel that we’ve been let down completely by NIE particularly, and with ESB who actually own the wire grid.
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“Whenever NIE and their shareholders get the dividends and get their bonuses they don’t share them with the customers, so why should we have to pay for our own compensation?
“I think Stormont could do a lot more to actually impose that on NIE.”
During the week, warnings were given that any compensation scheme would likely see bills soar by £15 for every household.
Utility Regulator CEO John French outlined the consequences on BBC Radio Ulster’s Nolan Show.
“What happens in GB is Ofgem… have been given the statutory powers to take this forward,” he said.
“They allow companies like Scottish Power to undertake a compensation scheme. That compensation scheme isn’t from their profits.
“The [companies] are allowed to take monies through the network charges of consumers in England, Scotland and Wales to pay for that compensation.
“It is put onto their network charges which make up about 20-30% of consumers’ bills. If you were to run a similar scheme here in Northern Ireland based on what Ofgem say, you would be adding about 1-2% on consumer bills.
“For this storm event you would be looking to be adding £7- £15 on somebody’s bill to pay for the compensation.”
Mr French said if NIE “wanted to put their hand in their pocket that is up to them”.
However, he also sought to manage expectations as he pointed out energy providers elsewhere in the UK don’t tend to do so.
Watch: Banbridge Golf Club clear-up operation after Storm Éowyn
In response to Mr Molloy, Ronan McKeown, who is NIE’s major incident coordinator, praised the “commitment” of the company’s teams out working and confirmed they have made a target to get power restored to everyone in Northern Ireland by 10pm on Monday.
“We have got a very robust emergency plan here in NIE Networks,” he said.
“Before the storm arrived we were already starting to make preparations about what we needed to do in the days ahead.
“We have faced a serious challenge here last week. A third of the country was off [power[ we have got 97% of the country back on and those 8,000 [who aren’t] we are working tirelessly to get them on.
“The commitment of people here in NIE this week has been unbelievable.
“From the very outset of this we said we were expecting this to take 10 days. All our efforts are aimed at restoring everyone by 10pm on Monday night.
“We are actually ahead of track. We have been doing amazing work to get to the 8,000 now. There are hard yards here ahead of us over the weekend.”
Northern Ireland Electricity working hard to reconnect the last 16,000 customers