Water supplies are under pressure in 60 parts of the country as the hot weather continues.

On The Pat Kenny Show this morning, Irish Water Head of Asset Operations Tom Cuddy said the utility has already had to take action in 13 areas.

He said Ireland has had a dry year so far, with the driest conditions in the midlands and south of the country.

Mr Cuddy said holiday hotspots and agricultural areas are under the most pressure as the hot weather continues.

In the 13 areas that are most at risk, he said Irish Water was focused on “interventions that have low or no impact on people”.

“In some cases, we’re tankering water to reservoirs at night-time from supplies that have sufficient water,” he said.

“We’re applying pressure reduction where appropriate, particularly at night-time. We’re bringing online some backup sources that may have been offline for a while.

“We’re also cross-connecting adjacent schemes so we may be able to supply or change the boundaries between different schemes.

“We’re sweating the assets we have. Optimising our use of our treatment plants and public stations.”

Sunshine

Met Éireann has issued a weather advisory noting that a ‘hot spell’ will remain in place through the rest of the week and the weekend.

Temperatures are expected to hit 26C this afternoon and climb steadily through the week with ‘really fine, sunny weather’ in most places.

Mr Cuddy said Ireland is still relatively stable when compared to the UK and Europe where there are “significant water shortages”.

Water levels

He said low water levels in Ireland lakes and reservoirs used to be a twice a century occurrence – but now it is far more common.

“It was probably a once in 50-year situation, it has moved to once in a decade and for some of our sources it is even more frequent now,” he said

“We do monitor those very, very closely and it’s very important that we manage the level of water throughout the year because it’s the rain that falls in the winter that we need in the summer.

“We had experience in 2018, which isn’t so long ago, where there was very significant depletion in Dublin and Cork and we really have a close watch on those areas.”

He said Irish Water is watching source levels closely to see if restrictions will be needed later in the summer.

He noted that while hot weather tends to see levels drop, it also leads to an increase in demand.

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