Over 1200 homes and businesses in the Cavanacaw to Ballynahone areas of Armagh were left without electricity on Friday (15 June) following contractor damage to high voltage underground cables.

Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE), the network company, responded immediately and customers had electricity supplies restored in stages with the first group of 283 customers restored within two hours, the second group of 549 customers were restored by 15:50 and the remaining 417 customers were restored.

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Shirley Devlin, NIE Customer Relations Manager for the Armagh area said: "It is unfortunate that our customers suffered an unnecessary power cut because of damage caused by third parties. Luckily in this case no one was injured but the results could have been very different.

"Contractors should exercise extreme caution when working in the vicinity of underground cables, using safe working practices such as digging trial holes and digging by hand to avoid any damage to or alteration of the location of the cable. Any incident of damage to the electricity network can cause inconvenience to customers in surrounding areas and place contractors at risk from injury."

(CD)