Cabling needs upgrading before public lights across Cork can be replaced

While work has just been completed on a multi-million euro retrofitting of more than 24,000 public lights with energy saving LED bulbs across county Cork, a further 7,000 lights can’t be upgraded until a “high seven figure sum” is spent by the ESB to replace old cabling.

Padraig Barrett, the council’s director of roads and transportation, who is in charge of the project, confirmed at a meeting of the local authority’s southern committee that the multi-million euro project to upgrade lights in the county has just been completed.

This involved the retrofitting of 24,198 bulbs along public roads and housing estates, and it’s estimated this will have massive saving on power in the years to come.

However, Mr Barrett said that the remaining 7,000 lights cannot be replaced until the ESB replaces what’s known as ‘concentric cabling’, installed between the 1950s and 1970s and now considered obsolete.

Seven figure sum

He said that a “high seven figure sum” will be needed to carry out this work but was unable to tell county councillors when this work might by carried out by the ESB.

Mr Barrett said the council or its contractors were unable to do this as they can only be worked on by highly trained ESB technicians.

Mr Barrett and his Cork County Council team are in charge of the retrofitting of nearly 47,000 public lights across 24 municipal council districts in five counties in the south-west region.

The whole project is costing nearly €60m across that region.

Mr Barrett said: “Warranty procedure documents and deeds of assignments have been issued to the contractor who undertook the work and once signed by the contractor and their manufacturers, the certificate of completion will be issued to the contractor.”

Disquiet from councillors 

The completion of the project has been welcomed by councillors, but across the eight municipal districts in Co Cork there has been a lot of disquiet recently about the power of the LED bulbs.

Regularly during recent municipal council meetings, many councillors have raised this issue.

They have said the new LED lights are not as strong as the older ones and this is causing a lot of worry to their constituents, especially in terms of health and safety.

Several councillors have said that this is preventing women walking at night as they are afraid for their safety, as are elderly people or those who have impaired vision.

In a number of cases council engineers have taken this onboard and have redirected the arc of the lanterns to illuminate more specific areas along roads and footpaths.