The long-planned Greater Dublin drainage project, designed to serve about 500,000 people and facilitate new housing in the capital and surrounding regions, is facing a new legal challenge.
Uisce Éireann, which has previously issued warnings over its ability to supply new housing given the “desperate” state of current infrastructure, said the review could impact connections.
The body said it hoped the new legal case would progress quickly but warned that “given potential capacity constraints, the ability to support further growth and new housing connections will remain under review”.
The €1.3 billion north Dublin sewage plant received the go-ahead in July after seven years in planning system.
RM Block
However, a group known as Wild Irish Defence this week lodged a legal challenge to An Coimisiún Pleanála’s decision to grant of permission for the Greater Dublin Drainage Project development in a move which, if successful, could block the development.
Delays to the construction of the plant, which will serve north Dublin, Meath and Kildare, have repeatedly been cited as restricting the development of new housing across the Dublin region, as well as posing environmental and health risks.
[ How vital water project stalled for years over minor paperwork issueOpens in new window ]
The Greater Dublin Drainage Project consists of new regional wastewater treatment facility and sludge hub centre on a 30-hectare site at Clonshaugh in north Dublin. It also involves an underground orbital sewer from Blanchardstown to Clonshaugh, and an outfall pipe to return the treated wastewater to a discharge point six kilometres out to sea.
Uisce Éireann said it noted that a judicial review challenge had been lodged in relation to An Coimisiún Pleanála’s July 2025 decision to grant planning permission for the Greater Dublin Drainage project.
Uisce Éireann director of infrastructure delivery Maria O’Dwyer, said it was “disappointed at this latest delay to this big national infrastructure project for which planning was first submitted for planning in 2018”.
“Given population growth since then, the Greater Dublin Drainage project has become even more critical to support Dublin’s current and long-term social and economic development, particularly in regard to the provision of much-needed new housing across the Greater Dublin Area.”
Ms O’Dwyer said Uisce Éireann hoped that the case would progress quickly through the judicial review process “so that we can commence delivery of this vital infrastructure project as soon as possible”.
The utility said in the absence of clarity and certainty on the timeline for the delivery of the Greater Dublin Drainage project, Uisce Éireann would “continue to optimise available network capacity at the Ringsend wastewater treatment plant”.
“However, given potential capacity constraints the ability to support further growth and new housing connections will remain under review.”
Uisce Éireann has delivered a series of warnings in recent months about its ability to supply new homes. In March the utility’s chairman Jerry Grant told a Royal Institute of Architects of Ireland conference that the State‘s water and sewerage systems “are in a desperate state” because of “extraordinary complacency” and “passive indifference” in investment in infrastructure.
The goal of building 50,000 homes could not be met unless there was a “new approach from the Government” and “leadership from the very top” in developing water services, Mr Grant said.
