‘People in darkness’ - urgent calls to repair broken public lighting in Waterford
Cllr Joe Kelly spoke on the subject at the April meeting of the Waterford Metropolitan District
There are “people in darkness” in Waterford city amid broken lights taking six months to be repaired, a council meeting has heard.
Independent councillor Joe Kelly spoke on the subject at the April meeting of the Waterford Metropolitan District.
Cllr Kelly said: “As Barbara and Paul know, there’s lights out in Hillview for quite a long time now but that’s not even the issue I’m raising. It’s the process of having them fixed and how long it takes.
“Just so the council and the press know that the fault has to be assessed, then the contractor must give a quote to fix whatever they’ve found, then must go to the council to open a road opening licence, then you have the contractor doing the work.
“Then we must wait a further probably six to eight weeks for the ESB to give permission for a connection.
“The whole process can take 16 to 26 weeks and no wonder people in darkness across the city and county are wondering what’s going on.”
He went on to say that the council should be looking to complete these steps in tandem to speed up the process.
“We need to come up with and I’m asking the executive to come up with [a system] where we can, rather than these things being in sequence, that these steps are all done in parallel so that as soon as the ESB gives the go-ahead, everything else is in place.”
He concluded by saying that making contact with the ESB seems to be “the slowest element of the whole process”.
In response to Cllr Kelly, Barbara Stosic, Executive Engineer at Waterford City and County Council, said that the process was as he described it.
Ms Stosic said: “The process is more or less as you described. We’re applying for ESB connections as soon as we know that one is needed.
“Unfortunately, it can take anything to six, 12, even 18 weeks before we get a reply from the ESB.”