Michael Towey was sitting in his car outside the family home, in Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, weighing his options and wondering about moving to Dublin until power was restored following Storm Éowyn.
“After three days without power the house is literally like living in an ice box,” he said.
The family home, like swathes of rural Ireland, was just no longer habitable, he said. With no electricity since the early hours of Friday last, by Monday morning the difficulties had grown.
Mr Towey spoke about evenings spent with lights from beanie hats, trying to boil a kettle on a camping gas stove set up under a battery-operated light in the kitchen. The food defrosting in the fridge freezer, no water – the well uses an electric pump – for washing or flushing toilets.
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He woke on Monday to a house that had lost all of its retained heat over the last three days, he said.
Mr Towey’s son, who lives in the town, had bought a generator from a firm in Castlerea which had sold 62 generators in the space of an hour, he said.
However, there was good news waiting inside and having finished his conversation with The Irish Times Mr Towey was back on the line minutes later: “I switched on the light” he said, “and it worked.”
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Mr Towey paid tribute to the ESB crews who he said were working hard to reconnect homes such as his. But he said he was concerned that European Union countries had offered generators to keep water treatment plants running and he understood these had been refused.
In northeast Co Meath, where the ESB says some homes and farms may not be reconnected until Wednesday, Oliver Mulvaney said: “It’s a bit tricky to get water for the cattle all right. I have a little generator I keep moving around.”
Despite the lack of heating, light and power at his home Mr Mulvaney was philosophical about the situation.
“I plug in the freezer for two to three hours a day,” he said. “Whatever needs to be done; needs must. That’s all. I’ll keep moving it around as best I can.”
Pat Cullen, who farms near Crossakiel, Kells, Co Meath, also pointed to the importance of a generator.
Mr Cullen, who has a high-powered generator for his cattle sheds, along with a smaller one for his home, said: “Ah, yes a dairyman would have to have a generator. You wouldn’t be milking without it.”
Despite the relative comfort compared with some neighbours, Mr Cullen said it was “still not easy” to set up the alternative power supply. “It is a lot easier to walk into a shed and press a button,” he said.
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