More than 200 lights out in Cork city - a year after Council complained to ESB

There are now more than 200 lights out in Cork city — almost a year after Cork City Council’s chief executive wrote to the ESB about delays to fixing public lighting.

Fine Gael councillor Shane O’Callaghan proposed that Cork City Council make an official complaint to ESB, but was told the chief executive had already written — a year ago — on the issue.

Mr O’Callaghan said the ESB should be informed of the “lack of sufficient resources and assistance” they had given the council regarding the installation and repair of public lighting.

[/url]He said this had resulted in a backlog, and a large amount of public lighting all over the city being out of commission for long periods of time.

Some public lighting works, including new connections and fixes to broken lights, can be done by the council’s teams, but many require ESB support.

John Stapleton, the council’s director of local area development and operations, told the environment, water and amenity committee that chief executive Valerie O’Sullivan wrote to the ESB almost a year ago.

Ms O’Sullivan wrote to the operations manager of ESB Networks on November 6 2025, he said, outlining “significant” delays in dealing with new public lighting connections, and requests to fix broken connections.

Mr Stapleton said: “Although no formal response has been received from the ESB to date, it is intended to regularly update members on this issue throughout 2026”, Mr Stapleton said.

He added that ESB had, in recent years, rolled out a new system to record and action requests by councils, but since this new system was introduced, the council has put in requests for 113 jobs from ESB, but just 17 have been completed.

Mr Stapleton said that there are currently 212 public lights not working and waiting for ESB service attendance.

Feedback “suggests that there has been no marked improvement in the ESB service attendance as additional ESB resources have not been made available internally to action these service requests following the new systems introduction”, he said.

He added that Cork City Council and Cork County Council are liaising on this matter - the county council have reported similar issues with delays to public lighting repair by the ESB.

It was agreed that the ESB Management would be formally asked to attend the next meeting of the Environment, Water and Amenity SPC to address concerns.

Mr O’Callaghan told The Echo: “It’s totally unacceptable that the ESB haven’t responded.

“We have written to them again now asking them to appear before the committee, we are going to give them one more opportunity before we have to consider more drastic option.

“I have been raising this issue over a year, it’s a total lack of respect for the city council and the elected members, all of whom want this issue resolved as soon as possible.”