Some customers of Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) have been without power since the Boxing Day storms tore across the province causing £3m in damage to equipment and downing more than 600 electricity poles.

NIE is also reportedly suffering under massive overtime payments to exhausted engineers who are working virtually non-stop to restore supplies to the last 5,000 homes by midnight on Wednesday.

More than 600 electricity poles were downed

The payment of £65 per affected customer account was raised from £50 after an angry public reaction over the company's handling of the storm damage.

Chief Executive Dr Patrick Haren has so far resisted calls for his resignation after a failure of communication systems left many customers unable to find out when they would be reconnected.

Managing Director of Customer Services Colin Fallon said the company would meet the extra cost out of its annual budget and would not be raising prices to compensate.

"It has been a rough exercise. It has been a difficult situation, but this was a very, very serious storm. I don't know if people appreciate how severe it was," he said.

"The question is: How do you possibly cope with 50,000 customers off supply, all trying to reach you at the same time and all making six or seven call attempts?

"Even if you reduce these numbers, you really need hundreds of call handlers ready to deal with it. That's not at all practical. Yesterday we took 20,000 calls which were answered personally. Today everybody got through."