Wait times for ESB connections in new housing estates are starting to shrink dramatically

WAIT TIMES FOR ESB connections in new housing estates, which had been a bugbear delaying people being able to live in their homes in recent years, have dramatically shortened.

Grid connections had come under strain in recent years thanks to a growing population and increasing energy demands.

But a Construction Industry Federation (CIF) conference heard this week how tweaks to the system are allowing developers to hook homes up to the grid much more quickly. 

Connection plans are now being worked on simultaneously to the developer getting initial planning permission from the local council, rather than having to wait for permission and potentially fall down the pecking order of other industrial sites seeking connections.

Brian Tapley, ESB’s head of networks delivery, told industry figures that connections “would have taken six months or longer” before recent work undertaken by the government’s infrastructure taskforce.

Tapley said that the ESB has been able to “greatly speed up time” for getting projects through, which is part the wider €30 billion investment plan to enable new housing.

He said the ESB has also been reinforcing its network to cater for Ireland’s population growth. 

Sean O’Driscoll of the government’s infrastructure taskforce told The Journal that it’s a “small victory” as part of the taskforce’s action plan.

“In the past, unless you had planning, the ESB wouldn’t even talk to you about a connection. They’re now doing it simultaneously, so that speeds up on the ground physically,” O’Driscoll said.

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Rather infamously, delays to an ESB connection last year saw dozens of families in Portlaoise delayed for months from moving into their brand-new homes.

This resulted in the families having to cram into relatives’ homes or stay renting, while also paying a mortgage for the home they couldn’t live in.

The problems were laid out at an Oireachtas committee hearing by the ESB soon afterwards, as they explained that they operated on a first-come first-served basis for new connections.

This meant that the Portlaoise estate and others could not get in the queue for a grid connection.

“You had the numbers on the houses, the local authority had certified what the name of the estate was, but nobody could move in. That’s now all changed,” O’Driscoll said.

O’Driscoll, a former chief executive of electrical giant Glen Dimplex and ex-chair of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), was appointed to the infrastructure taskforce last year to tackle blockages across major energy and water projects.

He said the ESB measure is a “small, incremental thing” but he believes it helps to build belief in the government’s desire to genuinely streamline the delivery of housing and infrastructure.

“The infrastructure action plan has some really big stuff, but we’ve looked at it from top to bottom and from bottom up,” he said.

“That’s a small victory as part of the action plan.”

At the other end of the scale, the taskforce has helped see nine major projects deemed as ‘critical infrastructure’ to allow them to be fast-tracked through the planning process by granting them priority status.

These include Dublin’s Metrolink, light rail for Cork and the Galway city ring road.