Steen’s big job at Eirgrid

Eirgrid is learning fast how to deal with the storm of protest that greeted its proposal to erect hundreds of kilometres of overhead power lines as part of a modernisation of our power infrastructure.

The grid operator has appointed former senior Vodafone executive Rosemary Steen as its new director of public affairs. Steen, who left the mobile operator in 2012, starts in July.

Eirgrid, pardon the pun, has been shocked by the ferocity of the opposition. Local protest groups all over the country, stoked by councillors with an eye on today’s elections, want the wires put underground in places.

Steen will oversee all external affairs for the State company, including media relations and dealing with protest groups. That’s an awful lot of tea and barmbrack in country kitchens to be gulping.

She will also, presumably, spearhead the company’s engagement with the pylons review group set up by the Government to take the heat out of the situation.

Steen has experience of dealing with disgruntled protesters from her time with Shell Ireland during the early years of the Corrib gas project, which saw the jailing of the Rossport Five.

She tried to act as a moderating influence on those Shell executives who initially mishandled the early protests. That later blew up in all their faces. Let’s hope her new bosses have better hearing than some of her old ones.