Galway's incident response team is expected to review its latest data on water quality this evening, amid speculation that the boil water notice may be lifted shortly.
However, the Health Service Executive West says it has no knowledge of a target date of today that Galway City Council officials are said to have given the Department of the Environment.
It is understood some local authority officials had even hoped to lift the precautionary measures last week during the racing festival at Ballybrit, when the Taoiseach and members of Cabinet were in town.
Engineering works on providing an alternative supply to the city from the Luimnagh waterworks in the north of county are said to be progressing well, after a setback last month caused by an electrical component fault which shut down several water pumps.
Supplies to the county and to the city were disrupted for 12 hours, and several houses in the city and county were entirely without water for up to three days. However, county engineers managed to tackle the problem without resorting to use of the old Terryland waterworks, where the cryptosporidium parasite was detected at high levels last March.
The HSE West is reporting 240 laboratory-confirmed cases of the gastrointestinal illness caused by the highly resistant cryptosporidium parasite since January of this year. One new case was confirmed in the past week, but is believed to have been related to a previous infection.
Occurrence of the potentially serious illness is now approaching "background level" for this time of year, but there have been concerns about continuing heavy rainfall which contributed to the alarming rise in reported cases of cryptosporidiosis last March.
Health officials have to be satisfied with tests over two cycles of the parasite (four weeks in total) before it can lift its boil water order. Until then, up to 70,000 people in Galway city and parts of south Connemara must continue to boil and buy water.
