Lough Ree Power Station in Lanesboro closes today bringing an end to 62 years of electricity production in the small town on the Roscommon/Longford border.
Employees at the power station will stay on-site until the 31st of this month to carry out other work, but today is seen by the vast majority of local people as truly the end of an era.
The first of four power stations in Longford came on stream in 1958 with a sod burning facility and the present building constructed just 15 years ago is actually the fourth station on the general site in the past sixty-odd years.
At its height, the station employed over 150 people with many people moving between the various plants in the midlands over the years, and hundreds of more people were employed by Bord na Mona to harvest peat to fuel the power plant.
The death knell for the Lough Ree and Shannonbridge stations came last November when the ESB failed to secure permission to convert both of them to biomass.
Under the company's original decarbonisation plan the two stations had been due to continue operating for at least another decade.
Many people in the area believe the stations should have been left running for longer and that stopping them now won't really make much difference environmentally…
Local Fine Gael councillor Gerard Farrell says that while it is a sombre and a challenging future ahead for the town he's hopeful the jobs created as a result of major investment under Just Transition and the rewetting of the bogs will fill some of the void…
A statement from ESB says Lough Ree Power will cease exporting power to the grid in the mid-afternoon today.
It says that due to Covid restrictions no formal ceremony can take place today but they do intend to mark the milestone with an event to recognise staff and the wider community at a later date.]
