Cork County Council urged to keep lights on in towns and villages across the county

The public lighting in the main square in Cobh has been out of order for several months, a Fianna Fáil councillor in the town reported to colleagues as he called for a more effective reporting mechanism which would allow complaints to be dealt with more quickly.

Dominic Finn, a Fianna Fáil elected member of the Cobh Municipal District, said he had raised issues about the public lighting in Cobh previously last October and a few days subsequently, when he met a representative of the company involved in the LED lighting scheme, Electric Skyline; he said he was told that the problems with the system were ‘too big’.

“Still, last night, all those lights are out in the main square in Cobh where we have a taxi rank, public parking spaces, and the square is in complete darkness,” said Mr Finn. 

“I’m just wondering what’s the mechanism for reporting the faulty lights when Electric Skyline are unable to repair it?”

Several of Mr Finn’s colleagues also indicated they had issues with public lights in their localities. Audrey Buckley, the Fianna Fáil councillor on Carrigaline District Council, said there were “several dangerous areas where the street lights were out” and she couldn’t get any response from the company while Mary Linehan Foley, the Independent councillor in East Cork, said it had gone “beyond a joke to have the public lights out in a public space”.

Northern divisional manager Niall Healy said council officials met with representatives of Electric Skyline on a fortnightly basis. 

“We’re monitoring very closely all the calls and reports that are coming in and the timeliness in of responding to them,” he said.

“We’ve been through a very exceptional few months which has impacted on public availability,” he said, pointing to cabling faults which require ESB Networks to assist in their repair. He said that ESB Networks staff had been assigned to repairing power lines all over Ireland following Storm Éowyn. Mr Healy described Electric Skyline as a “highly competent company” and “very responsive” and called on councillors to provide him with reports about public lighting issues.

Council marks Seachtain na Gaeilge with bilingual meeting

Cork County Council marked the ongoing Irish language festival, Seachtain na Gaeilge, by encouraging the use of Irish by councillors and officials at this week’s meeting.

In the absence of County Mayor Joe Carroll, who is in the US as part of a St Patrick’s Day council delegation visiting Chicago and New York, the meeting was chaired by Irish speaker and Fianna Fáil councillor Gobnait Moynihan, who is from the Cork Gaeltacht village of Cúil Aodha.

The cathaoirleach/chairperson told her fellow councillors that there would be a ‘céad míle fáilte’ for contributions in Irish, and that no councillor should be nervous about speaking.

“I won’t leave you hanging,” she said, to assure councillors who spoke in Irish that she would them.

Each of the councillors in attendance, officials and representatives of the press were provided with a one-page glossary of , such as ‘a chathaoirligh’ (chairperson) and ‘Tacaím leis an rún/I that motion’ to ease their way during the meeting.

Council chief executive Moira Murrell paid tribute to the work of the council’s Irish-language officer, Aileen Nic Suibhne, and spoke about the work being done by the council to respond to the recently amended Official Languages Act, which will replace existing schemes to promote the use of Irish on council websites and in documents with the requirement for local authorities and other public bodies to provide services at a certain level.

In previous years, the coimisinéir teanga/language commissioner was critical of the council, after it was brought to light that it had used a machine translator, such as Google Translate, to provide an Irish-language version of its website.

The coimisinéir teanga also criticised the council for failing to produce Irish-language drafts of its development plan, and local development plans, at the same time as English-language versions.

“At present, the council is working on the Official Languages Act and I will be bringing that to the council’s development committee,” said Ms Murrell.

Several councillors used Irish in their contributions during the meeting.

Patrick Gerard Murphy, the Fianna Fáil councillor representing West Cork, is a member of the council’s language and culture committee and reminded his colleagues of that was available to them, including classes.

As the meeting drew to a close, Michael Looney, the Fianna Fáil councillor on the Macroom District Council, asked for an explanation as to why the festival celebrating the Irish language was called Seachtain na Gaeilge when it lasted more than two weeks.

“Shouldn’t it be called ‘Coicís na Gaeilge/the Irish-language fortnight?”, the councillor asked his colleagues.

Minister urged to encourage farmers to stop water run-off

A councillor whose town was severely impacted due to flooding which occurred during Storm Babet has called on the agriculture minister to encourage farmers to take measures to stop water run-off from their land.

Ann Marie Ahern urged her colleagues attending this week’s meeting of Cork County Council to her motion calling on the authority to write to agriculture minister Martin Heydon to ask him to incentives to farmers to implement measures including the reinstatement of ditches and create allocate allocated distance spaces from ploughing drills to gates.

The Fianna Fáil councillor representing Midleton said that water run-off was having a “severe impact” on roads, rivers, and streams, not just in East Cork but across the county.

She said: “What we’re looking for is the reinstatement of drains that would have been in existence in lands where they’re now closed off and the water is coming on to roads; and to create almost a boundary in between a ditch and a ploughed drill on a field, so that water that is running down is still hitting and having an impact before it comes out on the road lessening the damage.

“I would also ask, having experience of what happened in Mogeely during Storm Babet, that drills are actually ploughed away from housing and towns and villages, that they’re ploughed in the opposite direction, to create a further barrier to the water coming on to the roads.

“I don’t think it’s fair on Cork County Council and our engineers and other departments to have to enforce reinstatement of ditches, monitoring of the water run off and the costly impact it’s having on roads and finances.”

Her Fianna Fáil colleague, Frank O’Flynn, recommended that the existing Acres scheme be expanded and made more flexible to include putting back ditches.

“It’s a very big issue, it’s a big cost for councillors coming down the road,” he said.

Isobel Towse, who is the Social Democrats councillor in Skibbereen West Cork, said that “Ireland was experiencing more rainfall than ever before”.

“2023 was the wettest year on record,” she said, calling for the digging of swales which are like trenches to catch water.