Some progress but still unrest over street lights
ONGOING problems with faulty or broken public lights were once a gain a topic of conversation at last week’s Wicklow Municipal District meeting.
SSE Airtricity is responsible for the maintenance of street lights across the county and have been at the receiving end of criticism over their response time to broken or damaged street and road lights.
The issue had already been raised by Cllr Gail Dunne at the February meeting of Wicklow County Council. While Airtricity’s responses has quickened up in the intervening weeks, Cllr Dunne said he still felt a lot more needed to be done to rectify the situation.
‘The matter was raised at the county council meeting held on February 3 when 740 lights were out in the county. Some 320 lights have been fixed in the four or five weeks since then,’ said Cllr Dunne.
‘It’s terrible we had to go the way we did to get a response – forced to raise the issue at a full council meeting. Airtricity has extra people out working at the moment, but there are still some lights that have been out for over three-and-a-half months,’ he said.
Cllr Paul O’Brien said public lighting was broken along Bachelor’s Walk, where an elderly women recently experienced a bad fall.
‘The gardaí have actually turned the lights above the door around which are meant to light up the entrance so it shines out onto the street. That’s how bad the situation is,’ said Cllr O’Brien.
Cllr Mary Kavanagh suggested examining the contract between the local authority and Airtricity to see if it was possible to ‘claw-back some money’ for the non-delivery of services.
Cllr John Snell pointed out that a number of street lighting poles had been replaced with poles which don’t have an identification tag so a fault can be reported.