The unplanned outage occurred just after 1pm on Thursday, and impacted most of Wicklow town, including Main Street, with some local businesses forced to close. The issues occurred in Ballybeg, but a lack of clarity from ESB over when the matter would be resolved also left many businesses scrambling to keep their premises open, without any proper idea of when the power would return.
The president of Wicklow and District Chamber of Commerce, Anna Thornton, who is the managing director of DNG Thornton Properties based in Wicklow town, said: “The chamber acknowledges that the unscheduled outage was very disappointing and had negative impacts on local businesses. Not properly knowing when the power would be back on proved particularly problematic.
“Some local businesses did rally and kept their doors open as best they could, while others had to close, including the banks. The matter was further complicated by the lack of communication from ESB over when the issues would be rectified and when the power would be back.
“I know it has to be very difficult for the ESB crews as it is hard for them to provide a timeline until they properly ascertain the damage, but the lack of communication made it very difficult for local businesses and traders, as it’s hard to plan when you haven’t been provided with any idea of how long the power will be off.
“At DNG Thornton Properties we had to relocate staff to other offices and had to contact Eir to get our phones redirected. Businesses were without power for around two and a half hours before they were restored.”
In some areas power wasn’t restored until after 7pm in the evening.
Cathaoirleach of Wicklow Municipal District, Cllr Graham Richmond, who also teaches at East Glendalough School, said: “It appears to have been a fairly major issues and ESB treated it as a category one incident. Luckily East Glendalough School wasn’t impacted but it did affect all the businesses along Main Street in Wicklow town. I live on the Rocky Road and we didn’t get our power back until around 7.30pm.
“It was an unfortunate event and ESB immediately pulled all their crews from the area straight to Wicklow so they did react. It was after 7pm in the evening when the last homes were finally reconnected.”
The exact cause of the fault is currently under investigation by local ESB network teams.
ESB apologised to all impacted customers for the inconvenient caused.
“At this stage, we can confirm that a transformer outage near Ballybeg resulted in approximately 5,300 customers losing supply at around 1pm.
“ESB Networks crews responded immediately and approx. 3,000 customers had their power restored within 30 minutes. As restoration work continued, approx. 900 customers in the Wicklow town area remained without supply for the afternoon as crews continued to repair the fault. All customers had their supply restored by 7pm yesterday evening.”
Some weeks ago some residents of Wicklow town also received notification of electrical supply interruptions due to take place in Monday, September 22, from 9am to 5pm.
In May, MEP Cynthia Ní Mhurchú provided figures from ESB which showed a 20pc increase in planned and unplanned power cuts in Wicklow between 2023 and 2024, with the reasons provided including bird strikes, weather issues, lightening, overhead refurbishment, overloading, corrosion and defective equipment.