Electricians are tuning in and turning on

Paul Cullen is an electrician in Dublin's Poolbeg Power Station. He heads off early each morning to the station at the mouth of the River Liffey where the two tall red and white chimney stacks form a well-known part of the city skyscape.

Cullen is in the electrical/instrumentation department of the 1969-built station, which, he says, is now capable of producing 960 megawatts of electricity "at any instant".

He's been there about 15 years. His day starts at 8.30 a.m. and every day is different. "The work can vary an awful lot," he says. One day he is sitting at a PC, the next he could be working on a system that's 30 years old. He could be putting signal cables in or making recordings and measuring temperatures. It's not enough to wire something, he explains. "You have to know how it fits into the grand scheme of things."

Generally he wears protective clothing, safety shoes and a hard hat. As for his bag of tools, it's heavy. "You clock up a lot over 15 years," he says. His work involves measuring the various pressures and temperatures. It's about checking, sourcing faults, maintaining equipment and monitoring pressures and temperatures. "You have to check and calibrate in different areas of the plant." "We're mainly indoors," he adds. The work is not dangerous if you are careful. "There would be a degree of danger but there's danger in everything." The standards of training are high and there is an emphasis on safety with "some of the leading lights in safety" teaching and lecturing at the ESB training stations.

There are all types of systems at the station which have to be monitored and maintained, he explains, advising students who are thinking about applying to the ESB to become apprentices that it would be good "to have some sort of aptitude in the technical area".

"If you have a little bit of a grounding in the science subjects, it's half the battle," he says. But learning on the job makes all the difference, he says. You actually get to see what a resistor is. "You see the physical resistor. It's easier to understand."

Students who don't understand science concepts should not be turned off, however, he says. "You'd have to have some sort of aptitude in the technical area but if you don't understand in school, I wouldn't be too worried." As an apprentice you see things as they are, he says. "You'd also want to be prepared not to be earning good money for the first couple of years because apprenticeship jobs are quite low," he cautions. But, he says, the money improves as you gain seniority and experience.

He was lucky in that he did not have to travel when he was doing his apprenticeship. But some students who are thinking about this as a career option, he explains, may have to travel to stations such as Ardnacrusha in Co Clare, or Turlough Hill in Wicklow. His advice to you is: "be prepared to travel".

During the apprenticeship in the early 1980s, students went on block release to DIT Kevin Street, doing a couple of months each year. He mentions Leaving Cert physics, which he studied at school, as a subject that was also very useful to him at this stage. He grew up in Marino on the northside of Dublin's city. He went to Scoil Mhuire National School on Griffith Avenue and then to Ard Scoil Ris. He didn't know what he wanted to do while he was at school. "I couldn't make my mind up," he says. An offer to take up a place on the ESB apprenticeship course came through the letterbox first so he decided to do this.

He's still interested in learning more about his work. He's just started a course at DIT Bolton Street in programmable logic controllers. His advice to young people is to "do as many exams as they can and make the most of their four years as apprentices".