Spotty scheduled power outage raises ESB communications questions

There was confusion amongst local businesses today with what turned out to be a very spotty planned cut in power supply, writes Brian Byrne. The work was scheduled in order to trim back trees around electricity cables.

According to notifications sent to businesses and residents, the planned outage was to be from 7am to 3pm, and would affect the upper and lower main street as well as housing estates in the area.

Being a Sunday, the main issue was for local restaurants who do a significant business in Sunday lunches. For the Hideout, bookings were cancelled and staff told not to come in until later. But then the cut didn't affect them, and they had to scramble to get staff in earlier.

Fallons had a generator prepared to allow them to serve their regular Sunday trade, and their chef came in early to switch it on — but then it wasn't necessary as the power to the premises wasn't cut. Similarly there was no cut in McTernans Bar next door, although other premises in the Market Square area did lose their service.

Back up over the bridge, Bardons did experience a power cut as expected, but because the actual service re-start was around 11.40am, it didn't affect their lunch business ... a spokesperson said that, on previous experience,  they had expected service to resume earlier than predicted.

The Little Brew Cafe had decided not to open for the day because of the planned outage, having been informed that it would affect '100pc of main street' through the day. But neither the Eurospar premises next door or Armelle's Kitchen across the road had any outage.

For residents in the Nicholastown-Sunbury area there was an outage according to the plan, but not all residents had received official notification about it. Residents who experience an outage during a planned work sequence but who did not receive notification are entitled to claim €35 from ESB Networks.

There are likely to be serious questions asked from the businesses of the town about ESB Networks communications in coming days.

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