Updated at 6.37pm

ESB NETWORKS HAS said that power has been restored to 20,000 homes and business across the country today following an outage caused by a lightning strike overnight.

Crews from ESB Networks have been out working to fix faults since last night, and by 8.30am this morning, most of the homes knocked offline had had their power restored.

In a statement this evening, the company said that 20,000 homes have now had their power restored today.

Details on the latest network faults are available on the ESB power check website.

However in Achill, a lightning strike caused irreparable damage to a 38kV transformer that will need to be replaced which the company described as a “huge construction job”.

The company said that while network technicians are working to rearrange the network to supply customers in Achill from neighbouring networks customers are advised to conserve their energy use.

“It is hoped to restore supply to many customers in the area through this, however it depends on the level of load in Achill,” a statement said.

“Therefore we are asking customers who do get electricity restored to conserve their use as much as possible in order to share the available power.”

Elsewhere, crews are working on pockets of smaller faults and expect power to be restored by this evening.

In another lightning strike, in Waterford, a direct strike on an overhead power line caused six poles to split, and burned to two other poles. Crews have been working to replace them this afternoon.

Crews were also able to restore supply to almost all customers in Inis Mór and the company thanked the Coast Guard helicopter for its assistance in this.

People are being asked to report fallen wires or other emergency situations to the company on 1850 372 999.

“ESB Networks sincerely apologise to all customers whose supply has been interrupted at this time. Customers can be assured that our Networks Crews are working to restore their power as quickly as possible. We wish all our customers a happy and peaseful Christmas,” a statement added.

- additional reporting Hugh O’Connell

First posted at 8.38am

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