Mr. Alan Rossiter:

There are approximately 480,000 public lights across the 31 local authorities. The most significant programme under way at the moment to convert those from traditional technology to modern LED technology is the public lighting energy efficiency programme, PLEEP. At present, 21 local authorities are participating in this with three lead local authorities. There are south-west, east and north-west groups. Cork County Council is taking the lead in the south west, Kilkenny County Council in the east and Mayo County Council in the north west. In the south west, there are approximately 92,000 lights, the east group has 114,000 and the north west has 76,000. We are supporting this project by training the local authority contractors to work in proximity to our network. We train, assess and audit them when they need to come into proximity with our network. Approximately 30% of all public lights are on our overhead network. That is where the interface with ESB Networks would come in, regarding the assets transferred in the early to mid-2000s, where we try to unbundle those assets from our network. ESB Networks may be required to take action in the case of contact with the live network or where access to our assets are required in order to unbundle them.

From that point on, there will be no requirement to go back to the ESB assets because they will have been unbundled completely. It is a very ambitious programme. It is one of the main sustainability programmes that local authorities have under way. We are trying very hard to support the local authorities in this. We have monthly meetings set up with each local authority to work through the programmes.