“No excuse for 9 hour outages” says councillor

Cllr Mary Bohan said there is no excuse for power outages of nine hours saying that some people rely on medical equipment and that people should be given adequate notice and that the power would be out “for a much shorter amount of time.
Speaking at the Manorhamilton Municipal District meeting on Monday last, she also noted that the outage she referred to “was put in place to accommodate a private afforestation company.”
Cllr Padraig Fallon noted that not everyone has access to social media and written notices should be sent out.
Cathaoirleach, Cllr Justin Warnock said there “must be better communication” while Cllr Felim Gurn asked how people are compensated for food spoilage, etc. during the outages.
Justin Fannon of Leitrim County Council read out a response from the ESB that said that a duration of nine hours would be an exception and would not be normal but can and does occur depending on local circumstances.
Regarding scheduled outages ESB Networks endeavours to provide two days’ notice for planned outages, continued the response adding, “it is important to note that ESB Networks can never guarantee that power will be in place 24 hours a day 365 days of the year.
“If a customer needs to maintain an ‘always on’ supply, then they need to consider sourcing a generator to assure this supply in the event of an outage. (Where they use batteries, then they should always have adequate supplies of power available for every eventuality. Please note that ESB Networks neither supplies nor installs these batteries as this is an issue for the customer to determine their needs and circumstances).
“In terms of compensation, they said, ESB Networks does not compensate for interruptions to supply caused by trees falling on their networks or related faults.”