Piping Shannon water to Dublin: Fixing leaks won’t sate capital thirst

Earlier this month, Irish Water conceded that 761m litres of drinking-quality water are lost each day, because our supply infrastructure has been neglected for decades, by many governments.

Yesterday, that agency announced that it was to press ahead with plans, despite hundreds of objections and probably many more to come, to extract water from the Shannon and pipe it to Dublin, in a €1.3bn project intended to supply 40% of Ireland’s population by 2025.

The juxtaposition of those statements inevitably provokes a confrontational reaction — why take water from the Shannon to pour it into a colander in Dublin? Why not accept that the leaks must be, no matter what level of inconvenience rolling repairs inflict on the residents of our capital, greatly reduced?

They, after all, will be the ultimate beneficiaries of the project. What will happen if the leaks persist, even at a much-reduced level and Dublin’s population continues to grow, as is projected?

What will happen if industry demands grow as well (and it is likely that they will)? Will ever-greater quantities of water be taken from the Shannon? Might a second sponge scheme to take water to Dublin from, say, the Nore, Barrow, or Slaney be proposed?

Around half of the water processed to drinking-quality level is lost every day. That ratio, at 36%, is slightly lower in Dublin — where there are 9,000km of water pipes, “greater than the distance between Dublin and Beijing”.

In the Greater Dublin area, 207m litres are lost every day. Irish Water is addressing the leaks with a scheme that has an opening price tag of €500m. It “will save 166m litres of water a day by 2021 — enough to supply Cork city twice over”.

The leaks are an indictment of the dishonest and inept public administration that allowed the system, some of which was built when Victoria styled herself the Empress of India, to fall into such disrepair.

Local authorities must shoulder a small portion of the blame, but the greater burden of responsibility must fall on the politicians — of all parties — who diverted public money from pressing water issues to other projects, maybe more exciting, more visible ones that might win a few votes.

Naturally, and correctly, politicians will deflect that criticism and point to the “no way, we won’t pay” rejection of water charges — a rejection that came pretty close to mob rule on occasion — during the life of the last government.

With that rejection, which was driven by a very vocal minority, we surely cut a stick with which to beat our own back and let the politicians off the hook once again. It seems inevitable that the issue will have to be revisited. It will not, however, have an immediate impact on the Shannon proposal.

This is one of those ‘we-are-where-we-are’ unavoidables, a reality underlined by Irish Water’s suggestion that even if all the leaks in Dublin were repaired, the capital still needs a new source of water.

It is not, it never is, too late to learn the obvious lesson — housekeeping cannot be avoided and it must be paid for, one way or another. This lesson applies to our housing crisis, as well as to our water difficulties.

Surely it’s time to take it on board?