Laois town turning off Christmas streetlights over rising costs

A Laois town has been forced to turn off Christmas street lights for two weeks, and reduce the daily lighting up times all throughout Christmas.

Mountmellick is famous for its perennial 60 foot Christmas tree, but in recent years, the strings of festive multicoloured streetlights all through the town have become almost as beloved by locals.

While the tree has enough funding to light up fully this year, the streetlights are run separately.

Below: Mountmellick's tree and streets lighting up for Christmas in 2021. Photo: Diarmuid O'Connor

The small Mountmellick Christmas Street Lights is helped by Community Employment Scheme workers, and funded by local donations. The lights are already going up along the town.

The committee has made the difficult choice this year to cut back greatly on lighting up times. 

In recent years they were lit at the same time as Mountmellick Christmas Tree, on the night of the Late Late Toy Show, which this year is November 25. However the streetlights will stay dark until a fortnight later.

Rosemary Whelan has explained the impact that rising electricity prices has had, added to their concern about using up energy.

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"Like all households and businesses, we have been notified of a further increase in our electricity costs. Due to the uncertainty of the final electricity costs, we have decided to curb any additional spending and to manage our finances as prudently as possible as we do not know what our final electricity costs will be after the festive season.

"It takes approximately 2,000 metres of electricity cable and over 4,200 bulbs to light the town. To prevent a full outage
of lights, we run the lights off six electricity boxes which are each paid for separately, adding to our costs. Unlike
other towns, we have not able to connect to the electricity mains. If we were able to do so, this would be a huge
saving for our committee and this is something we plan on pursuing yet again next year.

"While our light bulbs are 1 watt low energy bulbs, it takes a lot of bulbs to light up the town. Given everything happening in the world and our responsibilities to a greener environment, we are very conscious of our energy usage and pressures on the national grid.

"Following consultation with members of the public through our Facebook page, lighting of the Street Lights will be decreased by two hours every day (lighting from 4pm-11pm) and the Street Lights will not be switched on until the 8th December.

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"This has been a very difficult decision to make, and we really hope that you understand the position we find ourselves in," Ms Whelan said.

Donations are welcome to support the festive lights along Mountmellick's main streets. The committee will hold their next fundraising event this Saturday, November 19 in SuperValu Mountmellick.

Their fundraising yellow ribbons for a Christmas memory tree will be on sale in OGormans Newsagents and Ger Dunne Gala.
There will also be collection boxes in local businesses including Steve’s Bargain Centre.