Kerry street light saga as councillor wonders how many agencies it takes to fix a lightbulb?
The KerrymanA Kerry councillor believes there are too many bodies involved in the county’s street lighting as concerns grow over the efficiency of light repairs.
Councillor Jimmy Moloney said the complex arrangement of ownership over public lighting is contributing to the missing of maintenance targets.
The majority of public lighting poles are owned by ESB, with some owned by Kerry County Council (KCC) and others private, while the actual lights themselves are owned by the council.
The ongoing maintenance of the lights is then the responsibility of Electric Skyline, one of the main public lighting contractors.
While Electric Skyline’s contract insists that public lighting should be maintained at a minimum 98.5 per cent, the county’s street lighting is currently 97.36 per cent operational.
“It’s frustrating because you do too many moving parts, too many bodies involved, and it’s one of these little things that does bog us down,” said Cllr Moloney.
“We’re going through the local government reform at the minute, now ideally what they would do is provide funding for the council to directly replace the lights themselves.”
“Otherwise, the lines of communication need to be better, rather than having to chase and chase this up.”
“The service needs to be up to the standard approved and where there are issues, it needs to be relayed back and a timeline is given.”
Figures released at a recent council meeting showed 16 public lights in north Kerry had been out for over three months, well over the 10-day repair service level agreement between KCC and Electric Skyline.
However, ESB works were required for 12 of these before the lights could be repaired.
“I’m surprised there were so many in Ballybunion,” said Cllr Moloney, “now I was involved in a few of them, but I didn’t realise it was at that scale.
“There were a lot of lights there and I know some of them have been out a long time as well…its not just confined to Listowel town.
“There needs to be better communication back to us if a light is reported if there is going to be an issue or delay.”
Between November’s MD meetings and January’s, a total of 506 faulty public lights were reported across the county, with most being repaired in 10 days.
However, 22 were reported as repaired outside the 10-day window, with another 51 reports not yet dealt with.
The main reasons given for repairs occurring outside the 10 days, were required ESB works and access or traffic issues.
It comes as east Cork councillors have expressed similar frustrations with Electric Skyline after a slew of public lights were out of action for months.
Cllr Eamonn Horgan spoke of “the frustration of dealing with a process that doesn't work.”
“It’s trying to deal with Electric Skyline,” he said, “and yes there are issues there but then if it's passed on to ESB it just goes into another black hole and you're dealing with two different sets of issues. I don't understand why we as an MD accept it.”
Cllr John Buckley said “the frustration with Skyline is just ridiculous. I've a light out now with nearly three months and they're passing it on to Electric Ireland, back and forth, back and forth.