Call to light road leading to Dew Valley Foods in Thurles

Hundreds of workers at a Thurles food processing plant are unable to walk to work safely as there is no public lighting in the area, heard this month’s municipal district meeting 

The footpath out to Dew Valley Foods has been raised at numerous meetings as there is no street lighting on it, said Cllr Jim Ryan. 

“It employs quite a number of people. They’ve been asking ‘when is the Council putting in street lighting’. It’s extremely dark.”

Cllr Seamus Hanafin said there are 400 people employed by Dew Valley Foods, and there must be some way of installing public lighting there. “I know it’s a 50k speed limit, but there have been other areas where they’ve put in lighting in 60k areas, and indeed, 80k zones. So there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be doing the same.” 

Cllr Michéal Lowry said Dew Valley is expanding, and is “example of an indigenous business that is providing a lot of employment and is known internationally - it’s crazy to think that a small thing like street lighting can’t be provided out to it, purely because of a policy issue.”