AROUND 16,000 PEOPLE were subject to water restrictions overnight, according to Uisce Éireann.

Low reservoir levels, as well as bursts and leaks, have driven down water supply in some parts of the country in the wake of the cold weather last week.

As a result, Uisce Éireann is implementing overnight water restrictions in certain parts of the country where the supply is particularly low in order to enable access during the daytime.

Speaking on RTÉ Radio One’s Morning Ireland, Uisce Éireann head of operations Margaret Attridge said that water stored in homes’ attic tanks should hopefully help people in affected areas still have some water during the nights but that the restrictions could continue for much of this week.

“While we have been busy repairing leaks, the increased demand is draining down some of our reservoirs,” Attridge said.

“We have had to put in place some nighttime restrictions. This has impacted overnight on around 16,000 people, mostly across northern parts of the country – Galway, Roscommon, south Leitrim, Meath – but down into Kerry and Kilkenny also,” she said.

In the Greater Dublin Area, the demand hit record levels over the weekend of 646 million litres a day. “That’s higher than our water treatment plants have ever produced,” Attridge said.

There has also been a high number of reports of leaks after Uisce Éireann appealed for members of the public to bring any issues on the network to its attention.

“Our crews and contractors have been busy repairing leaks over the weekend and the public are also playing their part. In the last four days, we had 195 leaks reported in from the public. That’s more than we had in the whole of November,” Attridge said.

Most of the households that had their water supply interrupted last week have since seen it restored as power outages that affected water access were resolved.

However, the problems now are down to the bursts and leaks and low reservoir levels.

Any outages that occur during the day should be of a “short duration”, according to Attridge.

“If people want information on outages they can look up information on their own area on the Irish Water website or they can register for our text alert system on our website also, and we will be proactive in providing them updates,” Attridge said.

“We would ask people to continue to conserve water. It’s really, really important that we protect what levels we have in our storage reservoirs and to check their own properties for leaks also and have them repaired,” she said.

“It depends on the the recovery and how much we can do to protect our storage reservoirs but some of the night-time restrictions will be in place most evenings throughout the week,” she said, but added: “The more we all work together on this, the quicker the recovery recovery will be.”