'Digging up 60km of very busy streets' in Cork City needed to fix wastewater treatment system

Uisce Éireann told the Public Accounts Committee it would cost 'roughly €2 billion to fix the network in Cork City today'

The Court of Justice of the European Union is planning to impose fines of over €250m on Ireland over the state of its water network, with Cork City a major contributor to the country's non-compliance with the urban wastewater treatment directive. File picture

Up to 60km of busy city centre streets would have to be dug up and €2bn invested to fix Cork City's ailing wastewater treatment system, Uisce Éireann has admitted.

The Court of Justice of the European Union is planning to impose fines of over €250m on Ireland over the state of its water network, with Cork City a major contributor to the country's non-compliance with the urban wastewater treatment directive.

In December 2025, the European Commission decided to refer Ireland back to the Court of Justice of the European Union with a request to impose financial sanctions for failing to comply with the judgment of a 2019 case.

In this judgment, Ireland was found to have breached the requirements of the Urban Waste Water Treatment Directive, which protects water quality and human health by requiring that EU Member States collect and treat their urban waste water before it is discharged into the environment.

At the Public Accounts Committee, Uisce Éireann's director of asset management, Sean Laffey, said the court is looking to impose “substantial” fines of between €16,000 and €100,000 a day, backdated to about 2019.

These fines, which could potentially be up to €36m per year, would be the liability of the State rather than the water body.

Mr Laffey told PAC members that “essentially, all the issues with the treatment plants will be fixed by the end of this year”, but that there are still some outstanding issues.

“One of the main issues is that the network for the city of Cork is non-compliant with the urban wastewater treatment directive,” he said.

We are looking at roughly €2 billion to fix the network in Cork City today and we are looking at probably digging up 50km or 60km of very busy streets in the centre of town.

He said Uisce Éireann is working with the government to put forward a phased basis for remediation conditions in court. “Ultimately, we will have to tackle the network in Cork but we are just asking for time,” he said.

“We are also working with the court to perhaps say we are not going to fix all of Cork, but if we start looking at integrated drainage plans and working with Cork city and we do it on a phased basis, would they give us extra time.” 

Fianna Fáil’s Seamus McGrath, a member of the PAC, said: “It’s obvious the Cork City water system is in need of substantial upgrade work after decades of underinvestment.

What's your view on this issue?

You can tell us here

“The last thing we need is for public money to be spent on fines so it’s vital that Uisce Éireann puts forward a strong and convincing case that they are fully committed to upgrading the system in the shortest timeframe possible.”

Uisce Éireann said in a statement: "Addressing the Cork City network will require a major, multi-year programme of investment and works to identify and deliver the interventions required to address the compliance issues. The approximately €2 billion figure referenced at PAC reflects the potential scale of that work rather than funding already provided for a single project."