Maintenance of the 3,000 street lights in Athlone will be back on a formal footing again by the end of May after a five month gap, while only an estimated 100 were out of order, the monthly meeting of the town council was informed earlier this week.
Athlone Town Council decided in the last budget not to renew its maintenence contract with Airtricity for 2011 for three reasons, namely, financial, to comply with the requirement to achieve competitiveness in the procurement process, and to increase its control in managing its network of lights. No figure on how much was saved was made known at the meeting.
“It is intended the council will be in a position to advertise seeking tenders for a new maintenance contract prior to the end of March with a view to having a contractor appointed in May,” said director of services, Barry Kehoe.
Cllr Paul Hogan told the meeting that since he saw the item on the agenda, he had a drive around the town the night before and had counted up to 50 out-of-order lights.
“On February 18 there were 115 lights not working, but that’s out of 3,000 lights in the town. Put it into context,” said Barry Kehoe. He went on to point out that up tp 25 per cent of all lights will develop a fault annually.
“There would have been just as many lights out this time last year. I don’t think there’s much of a disimprovement,” said Mr Kehoe.
“The priority in terms of public lighting is to upgrade all lights to avail of modern lighting technology. These modern lights use a fraction of the energy and last for a multiple of the lifetime of the current lights,” he stated.
“A framework for the evolution of the current public lights to this technology is currently being prepared at national level,” he concluded.
“While it’s great to make savings, there is an overriding concern over personal safety,” said Cllr Alan Shaw.
There are a total of just over 9,000 public lights in the entire county.
At the moment defective lights are being repaired on the basis of prices received from contractors for specific lights which have been identified as out of order.
Mr Kehoe requested that members of the public who wished to report broken or out of order lights do so in future to the town council on (090 ) 6442100 with the light’s number and the street name, instead of to the central ESB number as used up until Christmas.
