The owner of a jewellery and art store in Dublin city centre has said ESB power cuts on Thursday cost his business €15,000 in lost sales on the busiest shopping day of the year.

Ronan Campbell, owner of the Design Yard on South Frederick Street, said the store experienced two significant power cuts on Thursday.

“The power went at 11am today, then came back on around four and went again,” he said.

“We had to close up early on what is one of the busiest days in the shop and politely ask customers to go,” he said.

“The second it got dark, we had to stop doing business, because customers couldn’t see properly. We were trying to make sales by candlelight,” he said.

“We have lost at least €15,000 today due to lost sales because of this power cut. I had to pay my staff’s wages too today so it’s not ideal,” he said.

“We have customers who come up especially on December 8th to come up and shop here and it’s our one time of year to keep that relationship going, so today has been a disaster.”

Mr Campbell said he had rung the ESB, who told him the power cut was due to a cable fault.

“I asked if I needed to get generators in the event of another prolonged power cut, because [the ESB] said it is not guaranteed that we will have power over Christmas,” he said.

Cable fault

In a statement, ESB Networks confirmed that a cable fault had occurred in the South Frederick Street area of Dublin city centre, impacting on approximately 10 ESB customers intermittently throughout Thursday.

“Crews were immediately dispatched and worked throughout the day under difficult conditions in a busy city centre setting to locate the fault.

“As of 7pm, the crew is awaiting traffic on Molesworth Street to ease before commencing repair of the underground cable, which will involve excavation of the road. The cause of the fault is not yet known.

“ESB Networks apologises to customers in the area impacted by this outage and assures them that crews have been working tirelessly in locating and repairing this fault.”