'We all really enjoy it. Sure, why wouldn’t you?': Meet the team behind Cork's Christmas lights

Electrician Shane Kenny making some fine adjustments on the Christmas Tree in Cork. Picture: Howard Crowdy

For most of us, it all happens with the flick of a switch but for Cormac O’Sullivan and his team at Cork City Council, the official switch-on of the city's festive lights marks the end of a year of planning, months of preparation, weeks of installation, and days of meticulous testing.

Despite the hard work, the pressure and the weight of expectation in the run-up to Christmas, it's still the most wonderful time of the year for Cormac and his team.

"Some of the lads have been doing the lights in Cork for nearly 20 years now. They take great pride in their work," he said.

"We do get a chance a few days before Christmas to take a spin in to town to look at the lights, and to appreciate them, but at the same time, you’re always looking at the overall system and saying to yourself, ‘well, we could do with another set of lights there’, or you might spot a section and say ‘those ones are dimming slightly’, and you might see another area and say ‘we need to install a replacement section there’.

"It's constant really. It's just part of the job. But we all really enjoy it. Sure, why wouldn't you?"

Cormac, a senior executive engineer and head of plant and machinery in the council's operations directorate, has many roles and responsibilities but he's only got one thing on his mind in the weeks before Christmas — installing the festive lights.

He has been coordinating the city's festive lighting for about a decade, and has overseen the migration of the city-wide display from traditional old-style bulbs to the more energy and cost-efficient LED lighting system.

While many love the new lights, others long for the Christmas lights of the late 80s and early 90s — the lights which formed the backdrop to their Christmas childhoods.

"It's all subjective really — it's a question of individual taste," Cormac said.

He works closely with executive technician, Donal McGrath, and with electrical foreman, Pat Kerrigan, and his team of electricians and technicians, to ensure everything is in place for the big switch-on in early to mid-November.

But for that to happen without a hitch, Cormac and Donal start making their list, and checking it twice, once the lights come down in January, as the planning and preparation for the next year begins.

With almost 10kms of electrical cable, displays featuring hundreds of thousands of individual bulbs, and individual lighting sections that 20 years ago had one bulb per half metre, but which now beam with 300 bulbs, it's a massive logistical operation.

"The lights are turned off on or around January 6 and it takes about two to three weeks to take them down," Cormac said.

"We lay them out in a warehouse with dehumidifiers to dry them out fully. We then start looking at the stock, assessing what was damaged or what failed before we package it all up for storage in containers until the following October."

While the lights are in storage, Cormac and Donal begin flicking through commercial Christmas light brochures to see what's trending and what's popular, while keeping an eye on trends in other big cities.

"There has been a move in recent years to warm white but more and more cities are moving now to RGB — red, green, blue — programmable lighting," he said.

"The lights can change, and the system can be set to music. It is extremely expensive and we’ve seen it done in cities like Munich and Paris, where they invest heavily in their Christmas lighting."

They then start sourcing replacement or new stock in February or March, and discussing options with various specialist suppliers, to see what new products might be coming to market.

"When you’re doing this kind of work, you can't just walk in to your local DIY store and buy it off the shelf. We are often looking for kilometres of cable, and thousands of lights. So we need to buy from specialist commercial lights supplies," he said.

"A lot of these lights are made in Italy, Greece, Turkey, or China. So we have to get our orders in by March or April, and the lead times can be quite significant. The container crisis a few years ago, and Covid, did affect some supply chains, and there were a few sleepless nights waiting for supplies but we got there in the end.

"And because we are a local authority, we have to factor in a tendering process if we want to buy anything new, and that process takes time, so we have to start work on that early, and get our orders in early.

"That stock then starts to arrive usually in August or September and then, we have to start thinking about tendering for contractors to help with the installation of the lights in certain places."

And much like millions of householders do every Christmas season, Cormac and his team go to the local authority equivalent of the attic to retrieve the city's lights — but they do it in September and October.

"The containers are opened, we take the lights out, lay them out on the warehouse floor, and start plugging them in to see what's working, and what repairs are needed," he said.

"Those repairs are then done throughout October and November. It's a massive logistical operation alright."

And once the last notes of the jazz festival are played, council crews and contractors are deployed like elves in the night to begin the installation of the city centre Christmas lights, starting with the seven large ‘gateway decorations’ which are strung across St Patrick's Street, with warm white icicle and cluster lighting displays over the adjoining pedestrian streets.

Some of the work requires late night or overnight street closures, and stress can build when weather warnings delay the installation work.

The council also works to support individual trader associations or tidy town groups, either through grant aid or logistical support to install their own individual lighting displays in various precincts, such as along Carey's Lane, French Church St and Opera Lane.

The Cork Business Association installs the lights on Oliver Plunkett St, while Drawbridge St and the North Main St area also install their own lights, with council support.

The council's electricians work and coordinate with the staff in the council's parks department to install the magnificent lighting in Bishop Lucey Park for the popular Glow festival, and to install the lights on the 60 or so Christmas trees which the council erects on streets, in suburbs and in parks across the city, including the large trees at the Black Ash park and ride, at the Sam Allen sports centre, and a new one in Rochestown.

They work with residents’ associations and local volunteers in some areas to provide car battery-powered lights to decorate existing trees in suburban housing estates or on roundabouts.

They upcycled an old street lighting pole and strung Christmas lights from it at the highest point in Tramore Valley Park — a beacon of light seen by tens of thousands of motorists driving home for Christmas along the N40 South Ring Road every day.

The crew also installs the lights at the Red Abbey crib, and at the landmark crib at the Lough amenity, where former council electrical foreman John O’Sullivan, who is now retired from the council, still helps out.

The city's lights are powered by a number of premounted electrical outlets and distribution boards which have mounted on buildings and walls across the city centre over the years, with most of the systems under a photo-cell time-controlled system, while others are lit constantly.

In recent years, the council has added electrical sockets to several street-light poles in the city, so the Christmas lights can also draw from the same power sources as the street lighting.

Against the backdrop of an energy cost crisis, there was some concern the city's Christmas lights might not shine as brightly or for as long this year.

But Cormac said the power required for the city's entire Christmas lights display is about the equivalent of boiling a kettle overnight — using somewhere between 1.5kWh to 2kWh.

"The city used to have the 25W traditional light bulb. We then moved to halogen, which was about 5W, and now we have an LED system, which is about 0.02 of a watt. I reckon it would cost about 60 cents to run the lights on St Patrick's Street for a night, so the cost is tiny really when you think about it," he said.

Once the lights are up, the electricians have a well-rehearsed troubleshooting routine, completing individual checks on displays a few days after installation, and again on the day of the official switch-on, to ensure that when the big switch is flicked, everything works as it is supposed to.

"There's a bit of pressure trying to time the switch-on with the count-down, and we all have our fingers crossed hoping that nothing trips as the surge goes on," Cormac said.

"You have to remember that these lights have been dormant for the best part of 10 months, and then we are all expecting them to perform. We try to eliminate as much of that as we can but there are always little hitches here and there, and we deal with those too."

And so after overseeing the lighting of Cork, surely Cormac's own Christmas lights display at home is a thing of beauty too.

"It's well into December before the house gets done. That generally gets done at the last minute. Cork comes first," he jokes.

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