(Tuesday, 20th January 2009) The fallout out from the weekend’s severe weather conditions and the continued gale force winds, heavy rainfall and lightening storms are continuing to impact heavily on eircom’s network across the country. Currently there are up to 10,000 reported faults.

More than 5,000 faults were reported yesterday alone. The storm damage is nationwide and continues to impact every county in Ireland with Dublin being the only exception. Mayo and the Western seaboard, Louth, South Kilkenny and Waterford remain among the worst hit areas.

Our Storm Recovery Plan remains in place with more than 1,400 staff working on the ground. The immediate focus of our repair effort has been to prioritise locations with major infrastructural damage which have resulted in public health and safety issues. The high winds and ongoing lightning storms continue to cause significant damage to overhead wires and have also resulted in a large number of fallen and damaged telephone poles. The damage to the telecommunications network is severe.

Weather warnings remain in place and ongoing bad weather continues to take its toll and in many areas is hampering our repair efforts.

Our call centres continue to handle an exceptionally high level of calls. Additional customer service representatives have been put in place to help deal with the increased call levels. Customers are reminded that faults can be logged on the "Log a Fault" section of our website (www.eircom.ie) or through our automated customer service line 1901. Faults can be reported to either of these services 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

eircom would like to assure all of our customers that we have put our full resources into restoring service as soon as possible and many of our staff continue to work in very harsh weather to repair faults. Given the high level of faults and the extent of the damage, at this point we expect it could take until late next week to restore service to many customers.