Appeal for urgent meeting with ESB over major Mayo power outage

LARGE swathes of north Mayo were left in the dark after a major power outage over the weekend which impacted on 10,000 ESB customers.

The issue has been compounded by some homes and businesses losing water supply too, Councillor Gerry Coyle told a meeting of Mayo County Council today (Monday).

He has called for the ESB and EirGrid to attend a meeting of the local authority to answer questions on how this happened.

Councillor Coyle declared himself 'baffled' as to how a problem down in Sligo left a huge area in Mayo in darkness.

There should be a second line to service customers if something goes wrong, he suggested.

Councillor Coyle also stated that the electricity lines servicing Erris and Crossmolina were never meant to carry the levels of electricity that are now flowing through them as a result of energy generation from windmills.

The councillor pointed to the hardship endured by people over the weekend, including a couple where one of them relies on a hospital bed with a winch for their care - 'all gone'.

And with no home help at the weekend, people from other areas had to transport them hot meals.

A spokesperson for the ESB that a major issue occurred at the Cunghill 110KV substation station and that was the cause of the major outage.

The spokesperson said that crews began working on repairs from the early hours of Sunday morning and worked throughout the day to restore the supply.