The effects of Storm Darwin are still being felt by some 500 Eircom customers who still haven't had their phone service restored, almost two months after the weather event.

Some 140,000 faults were reported to Eircom after the storm struck on February 12th with people in the south bearing the brunt of the disruption.

A spokeswoman said service had now been restored to the vast majority of customers and the remaining customers would have their service restored later this week. “We have approximately 500 storm related faults on our network. The impacted areas are Cork, Limerick, Tipperary, Waterford and Kerry,” she said.

“The remaining faults are complex and require significant infrastructural work including cabling and poling.” She said the company expected the repair work to be largely completed by the middle of this week.

Asked what would happen to the phone bills for customers who had no phone service for almost two months, she said customers would receive bills as normal “but any of our customers experiencing financial difficulty should contact us directly. We will work with them to reach an agreement that works for them”.

Being billed for a non-existent service has galled Sue Magee, who runs Dolphin Watch in Carrigaholt, Co Clare. Her landline had not worked properly since mid-September but repair work was done one week ago. She pays her bills by direct debit and continued to be billed for the service while waiting for the repair work to be done.

She said she was told that the direct debit could not be stopped but the money would be returned when service resumed.