“I didn’t intend to cause any undue alarm.”
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has described as a “definite possibility” the prospect of people being found dead in their homes in the areas worst affected by the severe weather conditions of recent days.
In an appearance on Morning Ireland on RTÉ Radio One on Monday morning, the Taoiseach was asked about widely reported comments he made about the prospect of people having died in their homes during adverse weather conditions brought on by The Beast from the East and Storm Emma.
“I didn’t intend to cause any undue alarm but it is a definite possibility in the days ahead as we gain access to home in some of the areas that have been cut off,” Varadkar said.
“We did have a number of fatalities in the past couple of days; road traffic accidents, people who faced delays in getting emergency services to them.
It’s not possible to say for certain whether those unfortunate deaths would have happened anyway but it is a possibility that they mightn’t have had it not been for the weather.”
Taoiseach fears people may have died during the storm but have not yet been found pic.twitter.com/rNpxIDhbhT
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) March 5, 2018
The Taoiseach said that he expects it to take a few days before things return to normal following one of the worst weather events in recent history last week, particularly in the areas worst affected.
“I think what we did really was feel the full force of Mother Nature in the past couple of days, it was the worst snow storm in 35 years,” Varadkar added.
“And while people are back to work today, it will take a few more days before things get back to normal, especially in Wexford, Kildare and Wicklow, where some areas are still inaccessible and some areas still don’t have power and water.”
On Monday morning, Met Éireann issued a new status orange snow-ice warning for the province of Leinster, warning of the possibility of localised flooding and freezing temperatures on Monday night and Tuesday morning.
An extended forecast for the rest of the week, meanwhile, suggests that there’s no end to the freezing conditions in sight, with temperatures set to regularly drop below zero this week and sleet and snow showers set to arrive in the northwest of the country on Thursday and Friday.
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