Kildare bookmaker at Punchestown discusses ‘traumatic’ scenes during Portugal power outage

A County Kildare bookmaker who is due to appear at Punchestown discussed "traumatic" scenes in Portugal yesterday during a large-scale power outage.

Daragh Fitzpatrick, who is also a Fianna Fáil councillor representing the Clane-Maynooth Municipal District, discussed the incident, which lead to power being cut off for millions of people across both Spain and Portugal.

As noted by The Irish Times, passengers in cities were temporarily left stranded and roads became gridlocked as traffic lights stopped working.

The exact cause of the outage is still unknown, although Portugal has recently ruled out a cyberattack as being the cause of the outage.

Mr Fitzpatrick spoke with KFM host Eoin Beatty earlier today (April 29) as part of its Daily Live Punchestown Update news segment, during which Mr Fitzpatrick revealed that he was on a family holiday at the time in Portugal, and had only arrived back in Ireland in the early hours of this morning.

He described the past 24 hours in Portugal as being "traumatic" — he said that the power went out at about 12pm yesterday (April 28 last) in the apartment that he and his family were staying in.

"We went down to the reception, and they said that the power is gone in Spain and Portugal," Mr Fitzpatrick added.

Daragh Fitzpatrick. File photograph

He also said that people in the region had no phone connectivity from 2pm yesterday until 4am this morning.

Following this, speculation started to emerge from people regarding the unusual nature of the situation: "Nobody knew what was going on, bar just just [hearing] stories from other people, and stories from people can exaggerate into different stories."

He also explained that while the flight he and his family took back to Ireland took off on time, he heard "horror stories everywhere" from different people.

Mr Fitzpatrick added: "[For] society now, just to be without a phone for almost 24 hours... it's a bit crazy, to be honest."

When asked if he knew anything about the potential cause of the outage, Mr Fitzpatrick said: "No one in Portugal knew anything. Everything shut down by 5pm or 6pm.

"All kinds of conspiracy theories [were] going on... Who knows? I honestly don't know what happened."

He also revealed that he was worried about not making it back for Punchestown in time, adding: "If I didn't make it, it probably would have been the first Punchestown I'd say I've missed since I was five or six years of age!"

The full interview can be listened to here.

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