ESB agrees to monthly plans on street light repairs in Co Cork

Many Cork county councillors complained about public street lighting outages taking months to fix.

Councillors also complained about new lights not being switched on for lengthy periods because ESB Networks had not connected them to the grid.

ESB Networks has promised to allocate dedicated resources once a month to Cork County Council in order to fix broken public street lights and speed up the provision of connections for new ones.

The news was relayed to councillors by a senior official after many of them complained about outages taking months to fix. They also complained about new lights not being switched on for lengthy periods because ESB Networks had not connected them to the grid.

Complaints highlighted by councillors included:

• Six lights out in Charleville’s Main Street since before the summer and only fixed recently; 
• A light in Fermoy which has not been working for three years; 
• Lights out in a housing estate in Passage West for more than 12 months; 
• 31 lights not working in the Beara area, with several out in Ballydehob for a number of months; 
• Two lights out of action in Castletownbere for more than 10 months.

Niall Healy, whose directorate is responsible for public lighting, confirmed that ESB Networks had agreed to a dedicated once-a-month work plan for the council.

He said council officials hold meetings with senior ESB officials every few months, and officials had stressed to the utility that lighting outages present health and safety issues for the public.

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Mr Healy said the ESB has admitted it is under pressure to handle its workload.

“They’re telling us they are under increased pressure with [connecting]solar farms, windfarms, and electric [car] chargers etc to the grid,” he said.

"They’ve also said technicians are in short supply. We welcome their commitment to help."

Mr Healy said the council holds monthly meetings with its contractors, Electric Skylight. They took over from previous contractors in the summer of 2024 and are clearing a backlog left by the previous contractors.