Vital water works will take place over the next two days with thousands of customers to experience disruption to their supplies.

Parts of Dublin, Wicklow and Kildare will be hit with bouts of low pressure, discoloured water or total outages as repairs are carried out on a major network.

Uisce Éireann has detected major damage to a main that connects Ballymore Eustace Water Treatment Plant and Saggart Reservoir.

Portfolio Manager Mark O'Duffy said it is essential these works are carried out. 

“We’ve identified a structural defect that is in urgent need of repair,” he said. 

“So, just to put it in context - failure of a water main of this size would result in very significant local damage and disruption and would also result in loss of supply across Dublin and surrounding counties for possibly weeks [while we carry out] a repair of that nature.” 

Glass of water. Image: Megapress / Alamy

Mr O’Duffy said the disruption will impact different households in different ways. 

“Affected areas could experience either loss of supply, reduced pressure or discoloration of the water,” he said. 

“When the water supply comes back on again, there may be issues with some airlocks in the network that we’ll have to resolve. 

“Once we’ve those [issues] resolved, water quality should return to normal.” 

All maintenance work should have finished by Thursday.

Main image: A bathroom tap. Picture by: Alamy.com