Residents urged to ‘support vulnerable neighbours’ as tens of thousands impacted by Dublin water outage

Tens of thousands of customers, on the north and south side of the city centre, are affected by the outage that has been caused by a burst water main.

Irish Water said it is working with Dublin City Council to restore the water supply “as quickly as possible” in parts of the city centre and surrounding suburbs.

It is expected that some of the repairs will not be completed until 10am tomorrow. Irish Water said the repairs are “complex” due to the location of the pipe and underground services.

Typically it takes two to three hours following restoration time for water to refill the networks and normal supply to be fully restored.

Customers in the following areas may be impacted by reduced water pressure or water outages: Dolphins Barn, Harolds Cross, Kilmainham, Fleet Street, Brunswich Street, The Liberties, Gardiner Street, Dorset Street, Drumcondra, Whitehall, Artane, Coolock, Beaumont, Fairview, Raheny, Clontarf, Killester, Home Farm and surrounding areas.

Labour South West Inner City Councillor Darragh Moriarty said constituents in the Dolphins Barn and Cork Street areas are “severely impacted”.

“The water is basically trickling at the moment out of the mains. I got a couple of phone calls from people living on Dolphins Barn Street, which is right opposite from the Coombe Hospital, and there’s a local Facebook group in Maryland and there we’re all reporting that the water had either stopped altogether or had reduced to a trickle,” he said.

Cllr Moriarty said there are a lot older people in the affected areas and he urged neighbours to shared whatever water they can spare.

"I know that in Maryland in particular, there would be a lot of older people who might not have access to social media, who might not have even seen that the outage has happened. The messages that are going around on Facebook groups are, check in on your neighbours, see how their fixed and offer any sort of support you can in terms of going down to the shop for them,” he added.

Green Party North Central Councillor Donna Cooney echoed this sentiment and urged residents to notify Dublin City Council via its online alert service if they are affected by the outage.

She said the outage is further proof of the importance of the ongoing work to replace old water pipes across the city.

"They are liable to burst. A lot of people are complaining about the disruption that’s causing in terms of traffic on Alfie Byrne Road… but they’re replacing a 100-year-old water pipe. So hopefully, these things will happen less often when we have these pipes replaced,” she said.

Manager at Centra Bonnington, Drumcondra, Sharon Hutch had to call their supplier for an “emergency delivery” of water, as they have been bringing supplies to vulnerable customers throughout the day.

“We’re not completely out of water, but I’d say we will be,” she said.

"There’s a lot of old people near us that we know would need help, so we ran over with water to them before it’s sold out. There’s some people that can’t even leave their house and we’re bringing water over to them.

"We’re affected too, we have an emergency tank that we run off and we’re near the end of that too.”

The outage has also impacted thousands of other business across the city today, including the Pearse Lyons Distillery, on James Street, which had to close early as a result.

"We’ve had to close our doors today due to a burst water main in the area. Guests with advanced bookings will be offered to reschedule or refunded by our team in the coming days. We do apologise for any inconvenience,” a spokesperson for the distillery wrote in a Twitter post.

Irish Water said dedicated water services crews are on site, working on repairs and “every effort is being made to reduce the impact on homes and businesses and restore normal water supply as quickly as possible”.

“Crews are also reconfiguring the network to maintain customers’ supplies where possible. Repairs are complex due to the location of the dig and the presence of other underground services,” a spokesperson for Irish Water said.

Joe O’Reilly from Irish Water added: “The repairs are being conducted as quickly and as efficiently as possible to minimise disruption to homes and businesses and restore water for all customers.

“We understand the inconvenience an unplanned outage can have and we appreciate your patience as we work to return normal water supply as quickly as possible.”