Minister for the Environment John Gormley said "everything that can be done is being done" to address the current crisis in water supplies throughout the State.
Mr Gormley was speaking following a meeting of the water sub-committee of the National Severe Weather Co-ordination Committee in the Custom House.
Restrictions remain in place in every county despite the thaw which set in on Sunday, although Dublin City Council said it would ease them slightly to accommodate tomorrow's New Year's Eve celebrations.
"Work has been ongoing throughout the Christmas period to deal with the unprecedented weather, including the water issue," Mr Gormley said.
"I appreciate that many people across the country are experiencing water difficulties, but everything that can be done is being done to address the situation."
The Minister said that because of the severe weather, which saw temperatures rise by about 15 degrees in the space of 24 hours, significant leaks in the water system were unavoidable.
This had been shown to be the case in many parts of Northern Ireland, western England, Scotland and Wales, which experienced similar temperature rises.
"The work of the local authorities, who have been working 24-7 on this issue, is delivering results, and significant progress has been made, but it will take time for full water services to return to normal," Mr Gormley said.
Water restrictions are likely to continue into the new year for hundreds of thousands of householders on both sides of the Border as local authorities struggle to maintain supplies.
In the Republic, the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government said that local authorities were doing all they could to restore supplies and it appealed to householders to be patient.
Local authorities across the country are continuing to provide water from standpipes or tankers.
Most local authorities in the Republic are expecting it will be next week before water services are back to normal. Fingal County Council described the situation in the city’s reservoirs as “critical”, while Dublin City Council extended the areas which have night-time restrictions.
The council said today that while there had been a small gain in water storage at Stillorgan last night, the "very restrictive" regime would have to continue.
It said it would "take cognisance" of the festivities on New Years Eve. From this evening, there will be pressure reductions and cut-offs from 6pm until 2pm tomorrow. After that time, there will be no further restrictions until 1am on January 1st. There will be pressure reductions up to 4pm on New Year's Day.
Restaurant owners had been stressing the need for water supplies on a particularly busy night. Other local authorities, including Cork city and county councils and Kerry, have signalled that they are willing to follow suit.
Cork County Council said it hoped to have 90 per cent of services fixed by the weekend but the remainder would have to wait until next week. The council warned it would be seven to 10 days before supplies return to normal.
Cork City Council said today supplies will be restricted from 7pm this evening and will be restored at about 10am in the morning.
The council said that while it may take a number of hours to restore supplies to some of these areas, all such areas would receive "sufficient mains supplies each day to refill storage tanks in houses and other buildings".
Both of the main Opposition parties said they would make major changes to how water is supplied in the future. Fine Gael’s spokesman on natural resources Simon Coveney said the party would invest €4.5 billion over four years from the National Pension Reserve Fund in a new water system. The party also envisaged that the water supply would be replaced by a single semi-State water company similar to how the ESB managed the State’s entire electricity supply until recently.
Labour Party transport spokesman Joe Costello called for the mobilisation of the Defence Forces, including the Civil Defence, to take over the task of transporting water tankers to supply homes and businesses.
He said this would free up the local authorities to devote all their energies and resources to finding the burst water mains and burst pipes and repairing them.
"The water emergency that we are now experiencing throughout the country is even more serious than the month-long crisis of snow and ice. The daily loss of drinking water from the nation?s reservoirs far exceeds the quantity of water that the local authorities are able to treat and replace daily," he said.
In the North, the Stormont Executive meets today to co-ordinate an emergency response to the water crisis which has left nearly 40,000 households and business premises without supplies.
Some residents have been without clean water for 12 days. Hundreds of people have queued for supplies from tankers while leisure centres have opened to allow people to take showers.
As the crisis worsened yesterday there were calls from public representatives for NI Water chief executive Laurence MacKenzie to resign. Mr MacKenzie apologised to those who had their supplies cut off.