Local schoolchildren watch as a rural house is connected

Rural electrification, therefore, presented economic challenges based on the costs of service provision to a low-density, widely dispersed, often relatively poor population, and engineering issues (especially in relation to hydro schemes) to do with topography and environmental obstacles. Remoter island communities off the west coast epitomized the extreme problems for a rural electricity service for sparsely populated areas. 

Catholic parishes were adopted as the basic territorial units for the development of the scheme. Parishes had a social infrastructure in place with representative councils and community organizations, as well as leaders who would act as promoters and innovators of the scheme. Clergy, for instance, were important in this regard, with many parish priests preaching mral electrification on Sundays to encourage residents who were often reluctant, skeptical, and even fearful of the electric as it was called. In total c. 800 local areas were targeted for connection. 

The Electricity Supply Board Is prepared to purchase 30,000 tons of WELL SAVED Hand-vron Vurf of jpMd quality for delivery to Cahirdveen Generating Station. 

Intending producers who complete a form ef cnntiuctwith the Board to supply turf to the station will be considered for advance payments to be made as follows  

per estimated ton nf good quality turf footed on the bog rot later than 30th June, 1937. 

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Fig. 104.1 Local schoolchildren watch as a rural house is connected. (Printed with permission from the ESB Archives, Harold s Cross, Dubhn)...

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