Northern Ireland Water warns it could be several days before all customers cut off from supplies are reconnected

Northern Ireland's water crisis will continue into next week, the state company blamed for the supply problems warned today.

Officials at Northern Ireland Water blamed a lack of investment in infrastructure for the shortages now affecting 34,000 people.

The utility firm said 18,000 homes in the city were running dry, with a further 5,000 in the east of Northern Ireland and up to 9,000 in the west still affected.

At a press conference today at its Belfast headquarters, Trevor Haslett, Northern Ireland Water's director of engineering, said the region's ageing water pipes were the reason why it had been hit harder than other parts of the UK.

"Although we have invested over the past three years around £150m in our water mains, that is still only replacing 1% of the system," he said. "In other areas of the UK including Scotland it's 1.9%, so just about half of our pipes are being renewed in comparison to the rest of the UK. And they've been doing that for the past 20 years."

An emergency meeting of the Northern Ireland executive of ministers is being held today to discuss the crisis.

Earlier, the Northern Ireland environment minister, Edwin Poots, said "the buck stops" with Northern Ireland Water, and the company was to blame for the crisis, which he described as "fairly significant".

The deputy first minister, Martin McGuinness, and first minister, Peter Robinson, have also criticised the company's performance.

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The lack of water was caused by a sudden thaw after arctic conditions burst thousands of pipes and allowed reservoirs to run dry.

"The buck stops with Northern Ireland Water," Poots said. "It's a government-owned company but it has its own board and the chief executive is beholden to the board so Northern Ireland Water is quite distinct in that it isn't run by the government but nonetheless is owned by the government."

Poots said there had been a £3bn investment project in the water infrastructure in recent years, but the problem was a "historic issue".

"The underinvestment that took place was over the period of direct rule. A lot of that was really down to the Troubles, when money was diverted from areas such as water to pay for bombs and security services and so forth," he said. "But if you have 30 years of underinvestment, you are not going to catch up in four or five."

As the Scottish government offered to provide 160,000 litres of bottled water yesterday, McGuinness said he felt "absolutely let down" by Northern Ireland Water.

Northern Ireland Water said all annual leave for its staff had been cancelled and all employees are at work. The head of Northern Ireland Water's networks said: "We're putting more water into the distribution systems than we have before, but the situation is worse than I have ever seen it. The vast majority of the leaks seem to be on private property, so we're urging customers to keep an eye out for leaking taps."

The company could not confirm last night if it would have households and businesses reconnected by this morning. "We are hoping to minimise [the problem] as far as possible – the term we are using is a few more days," said the company's head of customer services, Liam Mulholland.

"We have people on the ground in every area. This has affected the whole province. The scale of the situation is unprecedented," he added.

Owen Paterson, the Northern Ireland secretary, told Sky News he had "made it quite clear" to Northern Ireland ministers that "the British government is ready to help in any way it can".

He said: "I had several conversations yesterday with Caroline Spelman, the secretary of state for Defra, and we came up with various ideas we're happy to help with."

As well as supplying extra tankers, he said the British government could also help with information systems, because it had not been clear to people whether the water supply was switched on or off, and Defra has experience in crisis management.

He said: "The information has not been clear to people. They've had difficulty getting through on phone lines, they've had difficulty getting through on the internet, and, of course, some elderly and disabled people don't have access to the internet, so there has been a problem with communication."

Doctors have expressed concern about public health. "This is becoming a really serious emergency," said Dr John McMahon, a GP who had been without water in his home in Rostrevor for seven days.

Peter Maguire, another County Down doctor, said: "This really is now a public health emergency. We need water and we need it for the sake of public health. People with young families have not been able to flush toilets and wash themselves, never mind get access to drinking water."

He said Northern Ireland Water's response to the crisis had been "shambolic".

Seventeen emergency water stations have been set up across the north, from Derry in the north-west to Rostrevor in the south-east, but people are struggling to cope.

Supermarkets and shops have been swamped with customers trying to buy bottled water. Sainsbury's said its stores in Forestside in south Belfast, Sprucefield near Lisburn, and its west Belfast store had run out of bottled water.

Geoff McKay, manager of Dunne's Stores in Belfast's Park Centre, said there had been a huge demand for water. "We have one- and two-litre bottles still in stock, but there is not an awful lot left. Hopefully we will be getting six-packs but I'm not sure when they will be delivered."

Tesco in Royal Avenue, Belfast's main shopping street, ran out of bottled water on Tuesday afternoon.

Belfast city council opened its leisure centres last night to distribute water. In all but two, people were being given the option of using the showers. Some of the centres outside of Belfast, including Coleraine and Ballycastle, were open until 10pm.

In the meantime, people were doing what they could to get by. One Belfast resident said she had filled a garden container with snow to use for flushing the toilet, adding that the nearest drinking water distribution centre had initially been five miles away.

"That's fine for us, because we have a car, but not everyone does," she said. "I've bought paper plates to save on washing up and we're having sandwiches tonight so that we can save the water we would have used for potatoes. It's one of those things: you don't appreciate it until you don't have it."