Hotel guests in Glencolmcille, Co Donegal, were forced to brush their teeth using bottles of mineral water and had to flush toilets with buckets following a water shortage at the weekend.
Guests booked into 25 of the Glencolmcille Hotel's 37 rooms checked out early.
The hotel manager, Ms Sharon O'Hare, said yesterday she was taking legal advice on Donegal County Council's failure to supply the hotel with an adequate service. "Last October it happened twice, and we were assured that if it ever happened again we would be notified in advance so we could make contingency plans," she said.
On that occasion, she had to call in the local fire brigade to pump water into the hotel's reservoir. She was billed for the call-out but has forwarded it to the county council for payment.
"I don't think there is another hotelier the length of the country that would put up with this.
"I pay my rates - €16,000 a year - and for that I have no water, no sewer and no refuse collection," she said.
The Glencolmcille Hotel has been in Ms O'Hare's family for almost a decade. They are in the process of developing an 18-hole golf course. The hotel was fully booked at the weekend. But after the water ran out on Saturday night, many occupants checked out early.
The fire brigade was called to refill a reserve tank of 5,000 gallons on Sunday. But this had run low by the evening, and on Monday the hotel was again without water. Ms O'Hare said the ongoing difficulty had the potential to jeopardise the family's entire investment and was a major problem for local people.
Water supply was restored yesterday morning, but up to lunchtime Ms O'Hare had received no explanation from the council about the shortage.
Despite several requests, the council failed to respond to Press queries yesterday. However, a senior engineer with the water and environment emergency services of the council, Mr Peader McGroarty, last week said in an interview in the Donegal Democrat newspaper that the area would face water supply problems this summer. He identified north Inishowen, the Lagan Valley and Letterkenny as potential problem areas.