People living in high-rises may run into difficulty.
Irish Water has outlined water restrictions which will come into effect next week in the Greater Dublin Area in a bid to conserve water supply.
Earlier in the week, the utility company stated that they were continuing to work with local authorities in the Greater Dublin Area with a view to introducing night-time restrictions in a bid to avoid widespread outages later this year.
As of Friday afternoon, they announced that there will be 34 areas around the Greater Dublin region that will experience a reduction in water pressure between 10pm – 5am next week.
A full list of affected areas can be found on the Irish Water website. There are already over 20 schemes across the country already on restrictions, also listed on-site.
This comes as no significant rainfall has fallen for over a month and none is forecast for at least ten more days. To put into context – 95% of the rain we should have had in June did not fall.
In a statement, the company said the nighttime restrictions will be such that water will reach the ground floor of a two-storey house.
Most households in this area will experience low overnight pressure, but no loss of supply overall.
However, depending on the pumping and storage system in their building, people living in high-rise buildings may experience low overnight pressures.
Irish Water has also said there will be no daytime restrictions to water supply in the Greater Dublin area.
Speaking about this move, Irish Water Engineer and Corporate Affairs Manager, Kate Gannon said that a number of initiatives are in place in an attempt to prevent future limitations.
“Introducing restrictions was an option that Irish Water hoped could be avoided because of the inevitable impact on homes and businesses,” she said.
“Our water engineers have been working closely with the local authorities to see what measures can be taken that will save the water we need but also try to learn the lessons from the outages that were caused following restrictions in the aftermath of Storm Emma.
“Placing night-time restrictions on homes and businesses is not something Irish Water want to have to do. The very positive conservation measures that are being taken by the public in Dublin, Kildare, Wicklow and Meath are available to see on our website where a graph is tracking usage.
“We are monitoring the situation, but the weather is not changing, the rain is not coming. Something else has to be done to protect water supply and avoid widespread outages in the autumn.”
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