Power has been restored to more than half the householders and businesses that lost their supply mid morning in the North Mayo area, due to lightening.

There are just under 9,000 ESB customers still without a supply in the Ballina area.

Power went down across Ballina, Bonniconlon, Enniscrone, Foxford and Swinford  just after 11am this morning, impacting on more than 20,000 customers

A spokesperson for the ESB told Midwest News that it was lightening that had caused the extensive outage.

He said that repair crews were immediately mobilised and they expected to have the power restored to a large number of customers within the hour.

The repair work is ongoing and the company hopes to have power restored to all customers affected by the end of the day.