A former Sinn Fein MP has claimed NIE Networks should be doing more after saying he has been “sitting in pitch black with a torch trying to survive” for seven days without power.
The former Mid Ulster politician Francie Molloy also told BBC NI’s Radio Ulster that Stormont should be doing more and urged any compensation scheme set up to “put the blame completely where it lays, with NIE”.
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.
Explaining his situation, Mr Molloy – who lives in Co Tyrone – said: “I am sitting in pitch black with a torch trying to survive.
“Seven days and I have only seen two engineers last Saturday who came out to the scene where the cable is broke.
“No one has been back since. Everyone is speaking up and praising NIE workers and the power workers and the workers in the different utilities.
“That is fair enough because they are the people on the ground. But no one is challenging NIE and the structure of NIE. No one is challenging ESB who own the power lines.
Read more
“I think Stormont in general should be [doing more]. People are saying the compensation system should be linked to the English system.
“I say we have a devolved administration they should be devising their own compensation which should put the blame completely where it lays with NIE and they are the people who should be compensating the customers.”
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