Anger in Cork over ESB’s slow rate of repair of broken lights – ‘not good enough in 21st Century city’

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

Cork city’s broken public lights will take a year and a half to fix at the rate the ESB is getting through them, a meeting of Cork City Council has heard. Figures revealed at the meeting show that 155 street and estate lights are currently not working in the city while the local authority waits for ESB Networks to repair or replace them.

During the first eight months of this year the company responsible for managing the country’s electricity networks fixed just 62 faulty public lights in Cork city, averaging out at around eight lights a month. At that rate it would take more than a year and a half to clear the current backlog.

The figures were given in response to a question by Cllr Shane O’Callaghan. Cork City Council Director of Services Noel Murtagh said the problem lies with ESB Networks, not the local authority.

“It's a bottleneck that's created by the ESB and the resources available to us. The public lighting network is ours, but the power supply to it is the ESB's. And that's where the bottleneck is currently at the moment,” Mr Murtagh said.

Mr Murtagh said that increased assistance by ESB Networks technicians would reduce the number of faulty public lighting lanterns across the city. He said it would also reduce the lead time in energizing new public lighting pillars, which currently stands at two months.

Cllr O’Callaghan described the current repair rate as “ridiculous.” He told the Irish Independent he has received a lot of complaints about faulty lights. “I've had people from estates who are months without lights, which is often quite dangerous, particularly coming into the dark times.”

“I’ve followed up with the city council and the response is we're doing all we can but unfortunately we’re waiting on the ESB to call out. That's just not good enough in a 21st century city. The level of efficiency in the ESB obviously needs to go up.”

The Fine Gael councillor for the city’s South Central Ward called for either ESB Networks to assign more technicians to Cork or else an amendment be made to the current regulations to allow Cork City Council to do the work itself. “Something has to be done. This is not going away,” he said.