‘It’s just endless’ - Streetlights out in Waterford city location for a year and a half
Cllr Declan Barry spoke on the subject at the May meeting of the Waterford Metropolitan District
The streetlights have been out in one Waterford city location for a year and a half, a council meeting has heard.
Independent councillor Declan Barry spoke on the subject at the May meeting of the Waterford Metropolitan District.
Cllr Barry said: “Back on the 29th of August 2025, three lights were knocked out in Ballinakill by a private company lining pipes or cables or whatever it was and here we are, nearly a year and a half later and those lights are still not back on.
“That’s not fair. The people are paying their property tax. They went through all of last winter and now we are in May and they still haven’t got that.
“They’re saying we’re waiting for an ESB connection, whatever it is, you’ve got to make it happen. It’s not fair on the elderly residents that are living there.”
He went on to detail a similar situation on the premises of what was formerly the Uluru Bar, now Monaco Tom’s, on the Dunmore Road.
“I brought it up several months ago and spoke to a few of you - the lights outside the Uluru complex.
“It’s not just the Uluru pub but I believe the proprietor there is responsible for them. They have been out for 18 months.
“There’s two winters that have gone by now and there’s massive apartments and everything in that area.”
Cllr Barry concluded by calling on the council executive to take action on the issues that persist at the location.
“It’s just endless and I’m embarrassed when I’m going around the area there and people are saying they’re still not working.
“Can we write to the owner, I believe it’s the proprietor of the Uluru, and tell him he needs to put those back in play?”
In response, Paul Johnston, Senior Engineer at Waterford City and County Council, outlined the fact that the vast majority of streetlights in Waterford are working.
Mr Johnston said: “In relation to public lighting, you mentioned two locations there, Ballinakill and the Uluru.
“What I would say, councillor, is that our target that we set is 98 per cent of our public lighting working at any time.
“The last information that we had on that is that 98.6 per cent of almost 18,000 lights [are working].
“So it is quite a small percentage [not working]. It is a full time job to keep the lights at no more than two per cent out at any one time.”
He went on to explain that the lights outside the Uluru are in private ownership and are therefore not the responsibility of the council.
“Unfortunately, isolated incidents where there are extended outages do occur. We do work through them as you describe them here.
“The public lighting at the Uluru is in private ownership, it’s not in charge. The roads section will follow up with the landowner there.”