Eir working to restore broadband to 20,000 homes in the northwest

Kenneth Fox

Eir said approximately 20,000 homes remain without broadband, primarily in Galway, Mayo, Roscommon, Leitrim, Monaghan, and Donegal.

They said they are working restore access to homes in this area "as quickly as possible" and called it the most severe weather event ever recorded for Ireland's telecommunications network.

The storm caused almost 6,000 reports of network damage, including fallen poles, damaged cables, and other hazards. So far, more than 3,500 hazards have been addressed, but new reports continue to emerge as recovery efforts progress.

Over 250,000 homes and more than 830 mobile sites now have restored service.

There will also be individual faults that will take additional time to address.

Regarding storm resilience, they have invested €1.7 billion to modernise and expand its network infrastructure, enabling fibre connections for over 1.2 million homes and premises. An additional €500 million has been committed to further this effort.

Power outages continue to be a cause of service disruption during storm events, and therefore Eir has back-up power sources at 1,250 exchange sites across the country, static generators at over 250 critical sites, over 60 mobile generators, alongside battery back up on over 60 per cent of mobile sites.

Una Stafford, managing director of Eir Networks said: "Our dedicated teams across the country have been working around the clock in response to the storm, working closely with other first responders including local authority staff and the ESB.

"We have restored a majority of services now but there remains a significant amount of work to be done yet. We will be continuing our storm recovery into this weekend and February as we work to make our plant safe and get people connected again"