Blackout fears in Limerick as council may be left without light repair

FEARS have been raised over broken street lights heading into winter after it emerged the council’s maintenance provider is pulling out of its contract early.

As of Wednesday, July 24, there will be no repair company on hand to step in should any of the approximately 23,800 street lights across the city and county go out.

It comes after the maintenance arm of Enerveo - which has provided the service to council for the last number of years - closes.

Although Limerick City and County Council is on the look out for a new company to take over the contract, any arrangement will not be in place by next Wednesday.

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Fine Gael’s council leader John Sheahan says he and his colleagues have been “left in the dark” until now.

“What annoys me is this situation which has happened, which is very important for the people, and councillors who people will always make a call to. We’ve been kept in the dark until the show is over,” said Cllr Sheahan.

The Glin man had raised a question asking about the ending of the contract at the Newcastle West district meeting last week.

Here, Seamas O’Reilly, the senior executive engineer in the roads division confirmed the maintenance arm of Enerveo will be ceasing activity.

“Currently, there is a tender competition ongoing. The results will be made known to councillors when complete and we are examining options for emergency cover to bridge the gap between contractors,” he wrote.

"During this time, Limerick City and County Council acknowledge there may be a number of lights awaiting repair. Please note that currently our fault rate is very low, with approximately 99% of lights working as designed,” a spokesperson for the council said in response to a query from Limerick Live.

Cllr Sheahan said: “There will be safety issues in the county where lighting may break down and it may be somewhere near a pedestrian crossing at night-time. It could be, where we have footpaths, people might trip. All that comes into play now if they are not able to get a service provider to keep the street lights on.”

He also said that very few companies offer a street light maintenance service.

“We are now scouting the country and I believe there are only one or two providers who offer this. It needs expertise. The guys who fix these street lights must be proficient in ESB outages. It’s an acquired trade. Are we going to be held over a barrel now, price-wise,” the councillor asked.

As part of the new contract council bosses hope to approve with any new contractor, there will be significant penalties associated with not repairing a fault within 10 days, the percentage of faults exceeding 1.5% of lights across Limerick. As well as this, a penalty will be given should a provider not respond to or attend an out-of-hours emergency fault.