271 public lights in Sligo need repair, council meeting is told

A TOTAL of 271 public lights in different parts of Sligo town and county required repairs as of the week before last, a meeting of Sligo County Council was told.

However, that represented just 2.9% of the total of 9,369 public lights in the county.

The figures were given when Cllr Marie Casserly proposed the council ask Electric Skyline (the company which has the contract for the maintenence of public lights in Sligo) to carry out an inspection and an audit of street and public lighting in Sligo town and county. In a report, senior engineer Tom Brennan said that the 2.9% included 130 lights that form part of the high masts systems on the national roads, and 141 other lights (1.5%) within the county and borough areas.

The report stated that a maintenance contractor carries out a schedule of agreed nightly patrols to establish locations of lights that are not working and there is a dedicated person for maintenance/repair for Sligo county.

“A continuous regime of repairs is constantly being carried out. There may be some instances where there is a substantial underground fault within the network which may affect a number of lights within a circuit or loop. Due to the nature and location of the fault, and the condition of the underground cable, it may take considerable longer to carry out necessary repairs,” the report stated.

Cllr Casserly said that there seemed to be a “huge amount” of reports of faulty lights recently. “Maybe that’s because there are more people out walking at night and seeing them,” she suggested. She said there were a lot of lights around Markievicz Road that “seem to be going out regularly”.

Cllr Thomas Walsh said that there were “gaps in the lights provision” throughout the county and he asked if the rollout of LED lights was on track.

There is a national programme to replace the older sodium lights with more efficent LED lights.

Acting chief executive Tom Kilfeather said that they were awaiting a report on that. However, he said that he would be surprised it was given the impact of Covid.

“We are the last of the regions and at the moment the project is behind schedule,” he said.