The ESB has called on agricultural contractors to help restore power during this current cold snap.

Contractors are aiding the ESB to get into towns and villages where access is challenging following heavy falls of snow.

Approximately 10,000 homes, farms and businesses remain without power, according to ESB Networks regional manager Brian Tapley.

He told RTE's Morning Ireland on Tuesday that Kerry, Limerick and Tipperary are the worst-affected counties.

"We're working with the Department of Defence, local authorities and agricultural contractors in a number of areas where access is extremely difficult.

"We're not using it all over the country but certainly in Newcastle West in particular - that's how we're getting to our network," he said.

Snow storm

Killarney in Kerry, Newcastle West in Limerick and Thurles in Co Tipperary are the ESB's main areas of concern at the moment, despite lots of issues in rural areas also.

"A snow storm is different from a typical storm. What a snow and ice storm does to our network is that it puts ice loading on to our network, which can sometimes cause our network to fail if we can't access it.

"In some cases, ice gets around our transformer bushings and causes short circuits. In other cases, we're seeing trees brought down because of the impact of snow and the weight of the ice," he said.