Residents raise concerns about power outages after some homes left without electricity overnight

BISHOPSTOWN residents have raised concerns about power outages after a cable fault saw some homes without electricity for almost 20 hours.

The ESB Network confirmed that an outage occurred in the Rossa Avenue, Melbourn Road and Woburn Avenue area at 17:12 pm on Wednesday.

A spokesperson said this outage was caused by a cable fault in the Woburn Avenue area and resulted in 484 customers being without supply.

While ESB technicians responded quickly and restored 440 customers by 18.45pm, 44 customers were left without supply overnight whilst cable fault location specialists and civil contractors were mobilised.

“Repair crews worked diligently to have the cable repaired and all customer restored by 12.45 today. We apologise to all customers impacted, particularly those left without power overnight,” the spokesperson said.

Speaking to The Echo, a local resident, who did not wish to be named, said power outages have been an issue over the past five or six years in particular.

The resident, who has been living in the area for 15 years described the situation as “frustrating”.

“In 2021 you shouldn’t have to be dealing with power cuts."

"We’ve two young kids, there are people along the road with kids and it is mostly elderly people that are living in the area that was affected.” 

For them, their power went before 5 pm and did not return until 12:30 pm the following day.

While there has been a “gap” between the last power outage and the most recent, they said there have been up to three additional outages that were not planned or connected to storms in the last five years.

Thomas Gould TD said residents contacted him on the issue.

“They have to look at putting a plan in place to upgrade the infrastructure in the Melbourn Road area.

“In this day and age, these kinds of outages are so regular- it shouldn’t be happening.” 

A spokesperson for the ESB Network said they have identified some of the network in the area for upgrade works. They said "substantial expenditure" has been approved for the upgrade works, which are currently at the advanced design stage.

“ESB Networks is also engaging with residents to overcome some concerns associated with the upgrade and we are hopeful that these can be resolved in the near future allowing the works on the ground to commence.”