Irish Water error leads to cancellation of online accounts

A technical error has forced Irish Water to cancel the online accounts of 700 of its customers.

The utility company said details of what caused the error were unknown at this stage but that no personal or financial data was compromised at any point as a result of the issues encountered.

“This issue had no effect whatsoever on their Irish Water utility account or on our customer database and there was no risk whatsoever to the security of their personal or financial information provided when they signed up for online account management,” an Irish Water spokeswoman said. “It just meant they couldn’t log on to the account to view or pay a bill.”

Irish Water said that in order to fix the problem, it had to delete the affected online accounts.

It said it had “proactively contacted” the 700 customers affected to apologise for the inconvenience. It said the number affected by the problem represented fewer than 1 per cent of Irish Water’s online users.

An online account with Irish Water allows users to view and pay their water bills, sign up for direct debit payments and register additional properties. More than 230,000 online accounts have been registered to date.

The customers affected by the technical issues were informed by email of the matter and the resulting cancellation of their online account. They will be required to re-register on the company’s website if they wish to have access to the online service in future.

The annual report of the Comptroller and Auditor General (C&AG) states that at the end of August just under 1.1 million (1,099,545) homeowners had handed over their details to the utility.

A further 284,327 properties which have access to their own water supply have also registered with the company.

Some 524,132 households have failed to register with the company to date.