Water supply has been restored to large parts of Dublin following a mains burst on Thursday.
Uisce Éireann is advising customers to run their taps to flush out any discolouration in water following the repair of a pipe in Dublin 8 overnight.
Operations manager Margaret Attridge told Newstalk radio that supply had been restored to 42,000 households and businesses, but that water pressure might remain low on Friday.
She said the fitting on top of a pipe laid 40 years ago had sheered off, with such incidents happening about once a year on average.
Uisce Éireann and @DubCityCouncil have successfully completed emergency repairs following a major burst to a high pressure watermain serving Dublin City. It may take several hours for normal water supply to return to all customers. Visit https://t.co/fNz6ALIozo for more details.
— Uisce Éireann - Irish Water (@IrishWater) May 26, 2023
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There is no boil notice in place and the water is drinkable, she said, although it would not be pleasant. Her advice was to "run your tap. It's not that it's not safe to drink, but it's not very pleasant to drink. So you run your tap and that should clear it. It should be very localised."
If there were further issues she said customers should call the helpline 1800 278278.
The outage extended from Dolphin’s Barn through Kilmainham, across the river Liffey through Clontarf and Raheny because the affected pipe was high pressure.
Although there were over 40,000 premises impacted by the incident, many did not lose supply but just experienced low water pressure, said Ms Attridge.
Supply to reserve tanks in hospitals in the affected area was topped up overnight where necessary with support from the fire service. Water tanks were also on hand to assist if necessary to ensure supply continued for essential services, she said.
Ms Attridge acknowledged that the city’s network was old and that incidents like this could happen once a year, but that Uisce Éireann crews carefully monitored the system for leaks and weaknesses all the time through pressure graphs.
"What we're trying to do is build up that resilience in our network so we can have that alternative route where we can feed water to different areas.
"We are investing over a quarter of a billion every year in our leakage reduction programme and replacing pipes. And we have seen leakage reduced in the Dublin area significantly over the last three or four years because of the efforts in that area."
