The dark gaps in Cork’s nightscape – council hears public lights are too far apart in many places

By Peter McCarthy, Corkman

Many of the public lights in Cork’s towns and villages are too far apart to provide adequate lighting and will need to be fixed in a capital programme, a meeting of the Bandon-Kinsale Municipal District heard this week.

Cork County Council Director of Services Padraig Barrett told the meeting that the problem was discovered during the rollout of the Public Lighting Energy Efficiency Project (PLEEP), which has been retrofitting public lights with energy-efficient LED lighting across five local authorities in the south-west.

Mr Barrett said the project identified “a high number of gaps” in public lighting infrastructure in towns and villages where the distance between lanterns is too long to adequately provide light in-between them.

“One of the jobs we did as part of that project was that we undertook designs everywhere to make sure the light size or the light wattage was suitable to the location. But in some places we found that the gap in-between those lights was so great that there's no light that we could put there that would do the job,” he said.

“So we’ll have another capital programme to roll out in our towns and villages as a result of the project. We’ll have quite a big investment ahead on public lighting in the coming years,” Mr Barrett said, describing the work as necessary “so that people can go about their essential business safely.”

Under PLEEP, 77,000 public lights are being fitted with LEDs across Cork, Clare, Limerick, Kerry and Waterford. The new lights are predicted to save the five local authorities up to €48m in energy and maintenance costs over the next twenty years while also reducing CO2 emissions.