Clare County Council has lifted water use restrictions for over 30,000 Ennis customers.

Recent intensive rainfall had significantly deteriorated the quality of raw water entering the Ennis Water Supply Source, at Drumcliffe.

Subsequently, treatment at the plant could not accommodate the quantities demanded by consumers.

Following consultation with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Health Service Executive (HSE), Clare Council is to partially bypass the filtration system with a view to increasing the quantity of water that can be dispatched to consumers.

The move is designed to replenish the storage levels in reservoirs and restore supply to all consumers and ensure that critical areas such as hospitals and fire service have an adequate volume of supply.

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"All three parties are satisfied that any risk from a public health point of view can be kept to a minimum by full implementation of the partial boil notice to vulnerable groups, which remains in place," said Ennis Town Engineer Tom Tiernan.

"However, vulnerable groups are reminded that as a precaution they should continue to boil tap water at this time, or use alternative supplies. Vulnerable groups include patients who are immunocompromised, infants, pre-school children and visitors to Ennis. Institutions serving vulnerable people should also continue to boil tap water," he added.

Mr Tiernan explained the background to the water pressure problem: "Erratic weather patterns and intensive intermittent rainfall over the past two weeks or so, the interim membrane treatment plant started to become clogged much more regularly than normal with the result that its capacity to provide filtered water for distribution reduced by up to 40%."

"Clare County Council and Ennis Town Council sincerely regret any serious inconvenience that has been caused to consumers over the past few days and which will unfortunately persist to some degree over the coming days," said the engineer.

(PR/JM)