Cork householders are being urged to get rid of their wet wipes and go back to good old-fashioned toilet paper after it took council crews 8 hours to unclog a sewer.

Cork City Council had to send drain specialists to the one city sewer on Saturday after it became totally blocked.

When they got there, they discovered a 1.5m long 'sausage' of clogged up wet wipes, which have become increasingly popular in the smallest room in the house across Leeside.

The crew struggled to clear the blockage for 8 hours - and city engineer Simon Lyons said they had to use 8 full tanker loads of water for high-pressure jets to dislodge the mess.

The city engineer said the total cost of clearing the blockage on Saturday would have been around €2,600 to the taxpayer.

The wet wipes that clogged a sewer in Cork at the weekend

Last week, Mr Lyons told CorkBeo that the dreaded wet wipes had become the scourge of the Cork sewer system, which has recently had to contend with everything from Fat Bergs - giant blobs of congealed cooking fat - to flushed items including false teeth and syringes.

"The issue with these fatbergs and all the wipes - and often they do bind together, is if there is any small catch in the pipe they will snag onto it, and start causing a blockage - that's why we have sixteen people with the council who deal with those blockages and their impact every week," he said.

Mr Lyons says that ultimately, this whole unnecessary process is costing taxpayer money and could be avoided with a little thought on the part of householders.

"Think before you flush - think before you pour - and consider the environmental impact on our rivers and all the little animals who live there and form an ecosystem before you throw just anything down the sink or the toilet," he said.