The weather will be windy and showery for the weekend, with next week looking more settled, Met Eireann says.

Tonight (Friday) will be a windy night with fresh to strong and gusty southwest winds, it will be most blustery in northwestern and western coastal counties, Met Eireann says.

There will also be showers tonight (Friday), with longer spells of rain in many Atlantic coastal areas, with lowest temperatures of 7 to 9 degrees Celsius, it says.

Tomorrow (Saturday) will be another windy day with sunny spells and showers, it says.

Showers will be heavy and fairly widespread in the morning, but should become more scattered later in the afternoon, Met Eireann says.

There will be strong and gusty westerly winds for much of the time, but these should moderate later in the day and top temperatures will reach 16 degrees, best along the south coast, it says.

On Saturday night showers will die out and winds will ease, Met Eireann says and it will be cool with lowest temperatures of 5 to 7 degrees.

Looking to Sunday, Met Eireann says it will be dry for most areas with sunny spells throughout the day.

Highest temperatures on Sunday will be between 13 and 17 degrees in mainly light breezes, it says.

Outlook for next week

The weather is then set to improve next week with the weather becoming more settled, it says.

Next week Met Eireann says that from Monday to Thursday it will be settled and mainly dry with a mix of cloud and sunshine in light breezes.

Highest temperatures next week will be in the mid to high teens and nights will be cool with minimum temperatures locally in low single figures, it says.

Met Eireann says that current indications are that the weather will become more unsettled after Thursday towards next weekend, however many areas are likely to stay mainly dry.