Group claims council putting ‘cart before horse’

A group opposed to the controversial extraction of 350m litres of water a day from the Shannon for use as drinking water in Dublin has accused Dublin City Council of “putting the cart before the horse”.

Dublin City Council will seek planning permission next month via the Strategic Infrastructure Act for a 1,400-acre reservoir at Garryhinch, near Portarlington, Co Laois.

Under the plan, water will be pumped from Lough Derg in Tipperary through a new pipeline to the cut-away bog reservoir, where it will be treated before being transported to the capital and surrounding counties.

“We would have liked to have seen a scoping document being produced which would set out the parameters under which the environmental impact statement [EIS] would operate. We had hoped to contribute to this scoping document to ensure that the correct criteria were used in the EIS,” said Shannon Protection Alliance Group chairman Martin McEnroe.

The €426m reservoir will provide two months’ back-up water supply to Dublin, Wicklow, Meath, and Kildare. The project, which will create 1,000 jobs during construction, is a partnership between Bord na Móna and Dublin City Council, with the local authority taking the lead.

The Dublin region is currently supplied with drinking water from four treatment plants that can produce a maximum of 550m litres a day. Average demand is 530m-540m litres, which means there is minimal spare capacity if mains burst or usage rises.

The Shannon group has questioned the necessity for transferring such volumes of water from Tipperary to Dublin if water metering goes ahead. Mr McEnroe claims metering will lead to greater public awareness around water conservation.

“We would much rather see the Government invest in conservation. They should be spending this €426m on conservation and repairing leaks in Dublin’s antiquated piping system rather than upsetting the ecosystem in the Shannon. There are other conservation areas that need to be examined like the use of water in schools where you have huge water wastage,” he said.

Mr McEnroe says his group also has concerns that the Shannon region will do itself damage in the long-term by exporting its surplus water.

“Water is an important resource for industry and what if a factory wants to set up in this region and not Dublin? Surely we should have the right to attract industry to our area so all our children don’t have to move to Dublin to get work? We may not be able to do this if all our surplus water is being exported to the capital.”

According to Dublin City Council, the 350m litres represents a maximum of just 3% of the water flowing out of the Shannon water sources every day.