News that the Greater Dublin Drainage scheme could still be seven years away is not just a setback for Uisce Éireann, but also for Government efforts to tackle the chronic housing shortage.
One of two projects [see panel] that will be the biggest tests yet of the State’s newest utility, the Dublin scheme aims to boost the capital’s wastewater treatment facilities, which are already at full capacity. Among other things, Uisce Éireann says it will support housing growth.
Niall Gleeson, its chief executive, told the Dáil’s Committee on Public Accounts on Thursday that delays to the Dublin scheme and the east and midlands water supply project “will have serious consequences for the delivery of housing and broader economic development”.
In September, Wild Irish Defence asked the High Court to review An Coimisiún Pleanála’s decision to grant the €1.5 billion Dublin scheme planning permission. This will be the second judicial review of the project, first proposed in 2018, and could block it.
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While this was happening, the utility agreed a voluntary wayleave scheme with the Irish Farmers’ Association and Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association to get access to land so it can lay 170km of pipes from Parteen, Co Tipperary, to Peamount, Co Dublin.
That could help it tackle one challenge facing the east and midlands supply plan, which aims to ship water from the river Shannon to regions that need it most. The company will seek permission within weeks from An Coimisiún Pleanála for what will be will be one of the State’s biggest ever infrastructure schemes.
Water, or rather the lack of supply and treatment facilities, emerged this year as the latest roadblock in the housing crisis. In March, Uisce Éireann’s chairman Jerry Grant warned that without “leadership from the very top on water services” the Government would not meet its target of getting 303,000 new homes built nationally by 2030. He blamed years of indifference and complacency for the problems the company faced.
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In May, Uisce Éireann warned Dublin City Council that squeezed supplies in the capital threatened plans for 6,000 new homes. Days later it told The Irish Times that it could have to stop allowing new connections to the city’s waste water system by 2028.
Last month the Government responded by pledging €1.4 billion extra to the company in Budget 2026 to aid it in providing the supply and waste-treatment services needed for new housing. Politicians had clearly heeded Uisce Éireann’s warnings.
And maybe others as well. The Construction Industry Federation (CIF) sought €500 million a-year for water in its pre-budget submission. Not surprisingly, Conor O’Connell, its director of housing and planning, welcomes the Government’s response.
But he cautions that the next test for the company will be its plans for spending the cash. “That will be really crucial,” O’Connell says. He is more inclined to acknowledge that Uisce Éireann faces tough challenges than to criticise the organisation.
Planning tops the list of those challenges. The company says it seeks permission for 50 projects a year, including “normal applications to any of the 31 local authorities” or strategic infrastructure applications to An Coimisiún Pleanála.
It calculates that straightforward developments take five to seven years to get through planning and get built. More complex undertakings could run to 10 years and possibly longer than that. Those timescales embrace planning, environmental and marine licensing and hiring contractors to do the work. All those procedures are heavily regulated.
The company is optimistic that the overhaul of An Coimisiún Pleanála, along with new deadlines for decision making in last year’s Planning Act, will give it more certainty.
However, it stresses that planning is just one consent among many that water services need. The organisation adds that it “advocates for a streamlining and simplification of the multiple consents required, in addition to prioritisation of Uisce Éireann applications”. Streamlining means managing the various consent procedures alongside each other rather than one after another, which is the case now.
Builders should generally expect to wait 16 weeks for the company to deal with applications to connect to its networks, although that can stretch to longer for big developments, or where the system is already squeezed. Last year, Uisce Éireann says it “responded positively” to connection enquiries covering 115,000 homes.
The company has no live planning appeals but faces six judicial reviews. It does not comment on legal cases. However, it does say that those proceedings can delay work by 12 to 24 months, with obvious implications for any development needed to support housing.
The new planning and environmental court should improve how cases are managed, the firm predicts. It acknowledges too that the Government proposes changes to the judicial review process but adds “we will have to wait and see if it will bring about benefits”.
One high-profile case is a challenge by Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) to Uisce Éireann’s decision to connect fast-food chain Supermac’s motorway plaza development in Doora, near Ennis, Co Clare to the local wastewater treatment plant.
While it does not concern housing, Pat McDonagh, Supermac’s founder and owner, has warned that if it succeeds, the case could set a precedent that would threaten residential building around the Republic. This is because the project already has planning permission and succeeded in getting through a judicial review last year.
Supermac’s, a notice party to the case, argues that it could provide a basis to challenge similar wastewater connection agreements for new homes in the Republic, upending efforts to tackle the housing crisis.
“It’s actually outside the planning process,” a spokesman says. McDonagh maintains that the case should not be going ahead at all. His lawyers told the High Court that he would contest any application for costs by FIE.
Tony Lowes, FIE director, says the organisation is primarily concerned with the development’s likely impact on the treatment plant’s ability to handle storm water. He is sceptical about claims that the case, one of two taken by the group against Uisce Éireann, will set far-reaching precedents for housing.
Lowes is unapologetic, pointing to the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) recent report which found the quality of close to half the Republic’s waterways had deteriorated over the five years to 2024. Poorly treated sewage from urban cities and towns was one of the culprits.
FIE simply wants to put pressure on Uisce Éireann to tackle the overall problem. “Maybe we will move the dial a bit towards cleaning up our waterways,” he says.
Among other solutions, the EPA says that clean up will involve “accelerated investment” in waste water treatment. Minster for Housing James Browne this week got Cabinet approval for legislation allowing developers to build their own treatment plants, something the CIF has sought for a while.
O’Connell explains that the measure is designed for smaller developments of up to 40 homes on 300 potential residential sites unlikely to feature in Uisce Éireann’s investment plans. The treatment facilities will have to meet the State company’s “stringent” standards and EPA licensing requirements.
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Details have yet to be worked out. Broadly, Uisce Éireann will operate the plants and in some cases take ownership of them. Builders will foot the bill, so will have to recoup the cost when they sell the houses. “It will be spread over 40 units, so that should make it viable,” O’Connell says.
Sources predict that those costs will vary, running from very little to potentially millions, depending on each development, its location, the existing infrastructure and other variables. O’Connell maintains that all those issues will have to be thrashed out in coming weeks as the legislation is prepared.
As it is, Uisce Éireann charges builders to connect each new home to its systems and demands that they have development bonds in place. Buyers ultimately pay those costs.
On the ground, builders work closely with the organisation, whose engineers supervise and certify anything that connects to its systems. Both sides seem happy enough. O’Connell says his organisation’s members feel the company does its job well but believe it should be done faster.
Uisce Éireann argues for more public support. Specifically, understanding that its projects are “environmental” and that “the risk of not progressing with them is great in terms of adapting to climate change and meeting Government objectives”.
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The Government founded Irish Water in 2013 to take over responsibility for water supply and treatment from more than 30 local councils, and to charge households for these services.
But the plan to introduce domestic charges quickly ran into trouble. Rumblings of disquiet at the first signs of staff installing meters in 2014 evolved into mass opposition the following year.
Protests that drew up to 50,000 people on to the streets of the Republic’s cities forced the Government to ditch domestic charges by 2017. Instead, homeowners pay for water indirectly through taxes while businesses pay directly, contributing €272 million to the organisation last year.
Consequently, the company partly relies on contributions from the Exchequer for funding. Last year that reached €1.34 billion. In October, Government pledged an extra €1.4 billion to aid it in providing the supply and treatment services needed to facilitate new home building.
The Water Services (Amendment) Act, 2022 changed the organisation’s name to Uisce Éireann from Irish Water and ended its status as a subsidiary of another State entity, Ervia.
By now the company has fully absorbed local-authority water-supply and wastewater services, employing around 4,500 people, a number likely to increase if it is to meet the demands it now faces.
Greater Dublin Drainage Project
Billed as the next step in the capital’s water infrastructure, the Greater Dublin Drainage Project will handle waste from half a million people living and working in and around the country’s biggest city.
Its main elements will include a treatment facility at Clonshaugh, an underground pipe to there from Blanchardstown, a sewer to divert waste to there from the city’s northern area and an outfall pipe into the Irish Sea.
Uisce Éireann says Dublin’s waste water treatment facilities are already at capacity. The scheme will support new house building and free up space at the Ringsend plant to allow growth in its catchment south of the Liffey.
The plan is facing a judicial review in the High Court.
Water supply project East and Midlands Region
One of the biggest infrastructure projects since the State’s foundation, the Water supply project East and Midlands Region will take around 2 per cent of the river Shannon’s yearly flow from Parteen, Co Tipperary, and use it to supply the midlands and greater Dublin regions.
Its main elements will include a water treatment plant at Birdhill, Co Tipperary, and a 170km pipe running through that county, as well as counties Laois, Offaly and Kildare, to Peamount in Dublin.
Uisce Éireann has agreed voluntary wayleave schemes with Irish Farmers’ Association and the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association. It will seek planning permission from An Coimisiún Pleanála by the end of the year.
