Businesses and farms cannot keep being hit by storms in the current financial climate, a Cavan County Councillor has said. Fine Gael councillor Trevor Smith said many businesses are "living on a knife edge" as it is. The councillor said he spoke with one business owner from his area who paid €120 for the rental of a generator on Tuesday and had to fill it with €50 of petrol "just to keep his business open".
Cllr Smith also said poultry, pig and dairy farmers in Cavan are being particularly hard hit since both electricity and water supplies are usually affected by the storm weather episodes. Storm Debbie first struck the area in November and this has been followed by Isha and Jocelyn. One street in Ballyjamesduff has been out of power since Sunday and previously for four days during storm Debbie. Just before lunch, there were 390 houses in the Ballyjamesduff area still out of power today.
"Oh yeah a lot of businesses affected," Councillor Smith said, "out in the community you would get a lot of dairy, pig, poultry farmers badly affected. They had no electricity but also yesterday the water scheme ran out because it had no power so lucky enough that came back las night. Moving into Ballyjamesduff there's a street there which is off since Sunday, but probably the annoying street was about it is that street was off four days during storm Debbie."
