Committee Reports > List of Committees > Dáil > 1986 > Committee on Public Expenditure > Report No. 16 - Review of Procedures relating to road openings by utilities

APPENDIX 3

ESB Submission

SECTION 40, DUBLIN TRANSPORT ACT - IMPLICATIONS FOR ROADWORKS

At the moment Dublin Corporation Traffic Department provide a co-ordinating service for utilities excavating in the Corporation Area in the matter of traffic flow implications. The statutory control is, however, vested in the Gardai and they will be frequently involved in specifying particular requirements for individual jobs. On a weekly basis, the ESB furnishes a Work Schedule for our Construction Section in Dublin City District (5 Digging Crews) in a standard format to the Traffic Department and they will raise with us any job that has not been previously discussed with them where they see a need, e.g. co-incident jobs with other utilities, cumulative effects of work by other bodies, etc.

Our Fault Crew and our Small Servicing Crew operate outside this procedure and we consult the Traffic Dept. at our own discretion. We have not had any difficulties with the Traffic Dept. in this regard and they are aware of the position.

The rationalisation to one body as the authoritative Traffic Manager is obviously welcome subject to the following points:-

1.It is desirable that the existing liaison arrangements should continue, i.e. work programme for week ahead given in writing on previous Thursday. Longer notification periods would have an impact on Customer Service with delay on short time scale jobs, e.g. electricity supply to small commercial customers.

2.If a rigid bureaucratic approach were taken to approvals, with slow response times, it would reduce the element of flexibility necessary in redeploying crews, outside normal work programmes, with resulting inefficiencies.

3.Clause 3 of Section 40 refers to “emergency work”. It Is necessary to ensure that we would have unhindered access to our cable network for fault repair. Naturally we would be sensitive in our approach and liaison would be necessary in some cases, but loss of supply, presence of abnormal voltages in customers’ premises and 38kV oil cable damage are some of the cases where we would need to have discretionary permission.