Fancy a street light on your street or lane? Well, it’s going to set your local authority back €2,000 to erect just one light, Ferrybank Area Engineer Ian Gardner revealed at last Wednesday’s Piltown Municipal District Meeting held in Ferrybank.
Responding to a request by Cllr Fidelis Doherty (FG) regarding the lighting of the Mullinabro Road – which is popular with walkers from Ferrybank, Newrath and Sallypark – Mr Gardner revealed that the entire civil work of constructing one light comes to €2,000.
Since the Piltown District’s street lighting programme began two years ago (2016 marks the third year of this scheme), 50 street lights have been erected across South Kilkenny.
A further 25 are in the process of being erected between Piltown and Fiddown currently, which will enable pedestrians to walk safely at night between both villages.
Mr Gardner told Cllr Doherty that while the Mullinabro Road was not currently on the Council’s schedule of works, 18 lights would be required for this stretch of heavily used road. A further 20 lights, he added, would be required on the Golf Club Links Road, which links the Mullinabro Road to the upper Rockshire Road.
Cllr Tomás Breathnach (Lab) said that the County Council had almost become “a victim of its own success” given how well the provision of new lights had proceeded over the past two years.
“We’ve gone from having absolutely no lights in certain areas to now having very well lit areas throughout South Kilkenny,” he said. “But the lighting we have already provided has served to illustrate those places that, unfortunately, we’ve not yet been able to get to.”
District Chair Pat Dunphy (FG) said: “We can only take these different projects on a step by step basis every year…and the amount of requests we’ve received as Councillors would take years and years to get through, but nonetheless you’d have to be pleased with the progress we’ve made.”
Mr Gardner told Cllr Doherty that a revised scheme for the post-2016 period was something the Council would consider for pre-planning later this year, which could include Mullinabro.
Meanwhile, Ian Gardner informed Councillors that the surface improvement works on Piltown’s Creamery Road had been completed, while the foothpath upgrading schemes on both the Rockshire Road and Dangan Road, Kilmacow, were also nearing completion. Significant pothole patching and repair work has also been carried out in the wake of Storm Frank, he added.
