Irish Water Safety is appealing to people to stay safe around water today following the drowning of a man in Galway yesterday. The warm weather of the past week has encouraged many to venture to Ireland's ebaches and lakes, but IWS warns of the dangers of water whose temperature remains quite low, despite the current warm spell.

The 36-year-old Polish national got into difficulty whilst swimming at Ballyquirke lake near Moycullen at around 8 o'clock yesterday evening.

With temperatures set to remain high today thousands are expected to take to the water to cool down.

CEO of Irish Water Safety John Leech has warned that despite the warm weather the still very low temperature of the water in Irish lakes and along the coastline means there is a significant risk of drowning from “cold shock”.

“Water temperature at the moment is about nine degrees on the lake. At sea it’s about ten to eleven degres so you’ve got a serious situation in terms of cold shock and hypothermia. The cold shock is when you go into the water initially and you can end up grasping for breath and feeling totally out of control. You can end up bringing some water into the lungs and unfortunately drowning very, very quickly,” Leech said.