Concern over local power outages

Shauna Bowers 

A NORTHSIDE councillor is calling on the ESB to provide solutions to power cuts in the Dublin 13 area.

Cllr Tom Brabazon (FF) is demanding action, as he believes they are negatively impacting the livelihoods and jobs of residents in the Grattan Lodge, Clarehall, Elmfield, Parkside and Clongriffin Greenwood areas.

Cllr Brabazon said there have been two or three power outages in the last couple of weeks and each spanned a few hours.

“One of the outages was late on a Friday night which resulted in alarms being tripped and ringing until one or two in the morning,” he said. 

 “The alarms around the estate kept going off where we were living because the backup battery set it off thinking someone was after cutting the alarm. 

“They were going off until the early hours of the morning. It was such a nuisance.”

ESB Networks said sometimes outages are unavoidable but they try to inform customers in advance of any planned outages.

“ESB Networks occasionally require outages of our network for essential maintenance and repair,” a spokesperson for the company told the Northside People. 

“In areas such as Dublin 13, which is undergoing significant further development at the moment, we also require occasional outages to connect new transformers to the system. 

“In all of these scenarios the network outages are planned in advance and any customer being affected by the outage is given advance warning a minimum of three days in advance.

“While our networks are generally very robust, faults do occur from time to time which require immediate repairs and for which we have no advance warning and are therefore unable to alert customers.”

ESB Networks said it is aware there have been incidents in this area where unexpected outages occurred and said it is working to deal with the problem.

“We have had two incidents in recent weeks in Dublin 13 where a building developer in the area inadvertently struck and caused severe damage to our medium voltage underground cables,” the spokesperson said.   

“This caused widespread network outages affecting the areas you mention on both occasions. 

“We have been liaising directly with the contractor on these issues. 

“These incidents serve as a timely reminder to all those involved in the construction industry of the potential danger to life and limb for anyone striking a medium voltage cable.”