Revealed: Why so many of Kerry’s streetlights remain in darkness
The KerrymanFiles obtained by The Kerryman have shown major gaps in Kerry County Council’s public lighting upkeep.
Electricity Supply Board (ESB) files show gaps of up to two-and-a-half months where no new maintenance was performed despite a 10-day response time agreement.
The energy utility claimed that the council’s public lighting maintenance contractor, Electric Skyline, was failing to log jobs correctly following the introduction of a new system in December last year.
Emails also released via a Freedom of Information request show Sinn Féin TD, Pa Daly, intervening to get public lighting fixed as maintenance grinded to a halt.
Electric Skyline is employed across multiple local authorities for routine lighting maintenance.
Their maintenance contract with Kerry County Council (KCC) states that public lighting outages are expected to be dealt with within 10 working days of the reported fault. The company was paid €393,441 by KCC in 2025, based on a list of purchase orders over €20,000.
Nearly every maintenance job, such as replacing a bulb, must be logged with ESB, as the utility owns the majority of the electrical infrastructure.
However, ESB introduced a logging system, ESBN Sharepoint, on December 16 last year.
The request logs show that the first seven maintenance requests made on the new system were correct but subsequent requests were cancelled.
Between February 19 and March 31, 2026, 56 out of 79 requests were cancelled due to being incorrectly entered on ESB’s system, according to the energy utility.
In addition, between December 16 and February 19, no requests were logged. Neither were any logged between March 31 and June 16, a period of over two-and-a-half months.
“They passed the entry of works requests to their contractor, unfortunately the requests [were entered] incorrectly and the jobs had to be cancelled,” a spokesperson for the ESB claimed.
“Following on from the cancellation of requests, Kerry County Council requested training...and this training was completed on April 22, 2026.”
It comes after a Freedom of Information request in April revealed that a total of 131 lights had been out for over three months in Kerry. However, according to KCC files, over half of those reported incidents were in ESB’s queue.
The Kerryman has also obtained emails showing Kerry TD Pa Daly intervening on behalf of a constituent over a faulty streetlight.
The deputy was told by ESB that ‘not all’ work jobs were being logged appropriately by KCC contractors when he attempted to trace the progress of the incident.
He obtained details on the specific pole from a KCC officer to forward onto ESB, effectively bypassing the ESBN Sharepoint system which Electric Skyline appears to be unable to use at this time.
This entire process took over two months, from Deputy Daly’s initial email alerting KCC on March 9 to KCC confirming the issue has been resolved on May 19.
Councillor Jimmy Moloney has previously raised concerns about the involvement of too many agencies in the maintenance of the county’s public lighting, arguing that this makes the system too cumbersome and slow.
“The takeaway is that there’s too many agencies involved for what is a basic public service, and obviously the resulting communication issue that led to these delays which are still ongoing,” said Cllr Moloney.
“There needs to be, a, better communication between the agencies and ESB back to the general public if there is a delay, and, b, they need to look at consolidating this, because having three of them doing one job obviously causes all types of overlaps and gaps.
“Lighting maintenance is important, especially at this time of the year now.
“It’s a safety issue for pedestrians and for motorists.
“It gives people confidence that they can walk in a safe manner and that they feel secure in their neighbourhoods or their communities.”
“We should expect 10 days’ repair time…in the vast majority of cases, if it’s straightforward replacement of a part, it should be 10 days…what’s the point in having this agreement that says 10 days when it’s not happening?”
KCC said that since the launch of the new ESBN Sharepoint logging system, they and the public lighting maintenance contractor, Electric Skyline, have remained proactive and committed to ensuring that all necessary requests are submitted as per ESB requirements.
They said they continue to work with ESBN in progressing repairs to faults and that there has been significant progress with the co-operation of ESBN in recent months.