Councillors not happy with ESB outages

Cllr Mary Bohan described as “arrogant” ESB's decision to accommodate Coillte by turning the power off “from 9am to 5pm and to hell with everyone else.”

Cllr Bohan was responding to correspondence from the state owned electricity company in relation to outages in the area with seven outages recorded in the last six months; four of which were planned to facilitate cutting of commercial forestry near Killenummery Church.

Cllr Bohan said that some of the planned outages continued throughout the whole day and that some "people needed the electricity for medical devices."

She suggested writing back to the ESB to ask that they ensure that they give adequate notice before an outage adding that "to have the power off for eight or nine hours is not feasible just to accommodate Coillte."

She described the response from EBS as “unsatisfactory” with chairperson Cllr Felim Gurn supporting Cllr Bohan's sentiments.

Cllr Padraig Fallon said there was a case last year during one of the unplanned outages "where there was an elderly woman with medical equipment in the house and she was out for two days as the transformer was broken and they couldn't get to it.”

He stressed that the ESB need to make sure there is access to poles and transformers in forests.