Thousands without power across island of Ireland as storm clean-up begins

Thousands are still without power across the island of Ireland after Storm Eowyn swept in strong gusts that damaged buildings and blocked roads.

The focus will turn to the clean-up effort as weather warnings lift, freeing workers to reconnect power supplies and clear debris.

Around a million homes, farms and businesses in the Republic and Northern Ireland were left without power on Friday following record-breaking winds.

ESB Networks said 725,000 customers were affected in the Republic and NIE Networks said 283,000 were hit north of the border at the height of the outages.

Tens of thousands have since been reconnected but NIE Networks said it could take up to 10 days to reconnect others.

Utility company Uisce Eireann said around 138,000 people had no water as of Friday evening, and a further 750,000 people’s supplies were at risk.

A total of 235 flights were cancelled at Dublin Airport while structures, including a multimillion-euro indoor playing facility in Co Mayo, were severely damaged during the storm.

Northern Ireland’s Department of Infrastructure said more than 1,800 objects had blocked roads, and that teams would work to clear them once weather alerts had lifted.

PSNI Assistant Chief Constable Davy Beck said it will take days to assess the full impact of the “severe” storm.

“We’re only now starting to see the number of calls start to rise in respect of impacts, concerns for safety, and indeed, more and more reports in respect of roads blocked and issues as a consequence of that,” he said.

“So I think it’s going to be a number of days before we can fully understand the full impacts of this storm but certainly this was a severe storm.”