Cllr seeks to shine light on areas not lit in Donegal Town area
Conaghan seeks complete and comprehensive review of all lights in that area to take place
Donegal Town, famed for its yearly Christmas lights display over many years is certainly not having the same success when it came to public street lighting, councillors heard at the Donegal Municipal District March meeting of Donegal County Council, held at the Public Services Centre at Drumlonagher.
That matter was raised by locally based Cllr Tom Conaghan who asked that a complete and comprehensive review of all lights in the Donegal Town area take place.
He suggested that lights had not been checked or repaired for a number of weeks in some areas and he gave an example of the lights out the Killybegs Road not being on for over two weeks.
He was later told by officials at the meeting that the difficulty lay in pinpointing a fault in the underground cable powering on the Killybegs Road.
Cllr Conaghan said that the main reason he was asking for the “comprehensive review” was that there were too many lights off in different areas at the same time.
He could cite different areas, where there were 20 lights, ten working and ten out. Another location had ten lights of which three were not working.
He was not blaming the situation on anyone in particular but he stressed the situation contrasted sharply in other locations, where lights seemed to be switched on 24 hours a day.
He said that lots of people were out jogging and walking at this time of the year and it was important that they did so in a proper and safe way, while adding that he felt the bypass itself around the town was being used too much, for such purposes.
His motion was seconded by Cllr Micheál Naughton, who also pointed out that he was repeatedly receiving phone calls about more lights going out in many locations within the MD area.
He suggested that it would be a worthwhile project if the scope of the review was actually expanded to include other towns and villages within the Municipal District.
Cllr Michael McMahon said that there was a similar issue with lighting in the Bundoran area and he cited one area at the underbridge of the N15 Bundoran bypass, heading towards Kinlough on the R281, where the lights had been flashing sporadically for months.
That being said, he also wanted to give credit for an excellent job that had been done and completed by contractors for new and upgraded lighting in the car park area near SuperValu in Bundoran.
Replying to the motion, Mark Sweeney, the acting Area Manager for Transportation and Roads said the area office would touch base with the DCC public lighting management team with a view to completing the comprehensive as requested.
Acknowledging that the DCC public lighting (PL) management team is clear on concerns and frustrations regarding ‘some’ longer term repair delays, which were being addressed, he added:
“These are all as a result of more complex matters and not light bulb replacement. These all require increased financial solutions within the limited budget provided by members in the annual revenue allocation.
“”The PL team and its contractors has a programme of work for January and February to focus on addressing the outages, leaving aside all other works for this period.
“The issue with the lights on the Killybegs Road as noted in the example (by Cllr Conaghan) is a fault in the underground cable powering the lights.
“The Public lighting contractor and the local area office have been working on this issue over the last number of weeks trying to pinpoint where the fault in the cable is and repairing same.”
Mr Sweeney added that a new ESB connection is also being processed to facilitate the necessary repair work.