A €1.3 billion Dublin sewage plant, designed to serve 500,000 people, has finally been granted permission by An Coimisiún Pleanála after seven years in the planning system.
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.
Uisce Eireann hopes the plant will be operational by 2032, with construction expected to take up to four years following the receipt of a number of statutory consents including a wastewater discharge licence.
The Greater Dublin Drainage Project, one of Uisce Éireann’s largest national infrastructure projects, involves the construction of a vast sewage plant in Clonshaugh, close to Dublin Airport.
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It aims to ease the burden on the municipal sewage plant in Ringsend in south Dublin, as well as facilitating growth in the capital’s population.
The need for a regional sewage plant for the capital was identified 20 years ago and Uisce Éireann has said it is “vital” to safeguard public health, protect the environment and facilitate future development.
The scheme involves the construction of an underground pipeline beginning at Blanchardstown, which will collect and transfer sewage, via a new pumping station at Abbotstown, north of the M50, to the plant at Clonshaugh.
The treated water will be discharged to the Irish Sea through a 6km marine outfall pipeline from Baldoyle to a point 1km northeast of Ireland’s Eye.
An application for the plant was submitted to An Bord Pleanála, the predecessor of the coimisiún, in June 2018 and was granted permission in 2019. However, the decision was subject of a successful judicial review and referred back to An Bord Pleanála for a new decision.
The coimisiún has finally granted permission for the plant this week.
Uisce Éireann has delivered a series of warnings in recent months about its ability to from 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.
The cost of the Clonshaugh plant was estimated at around €650 million in 2018, Mr Grant noted. “Today, it’s €1.3 billion. That’s the cost of delay but it’s only part of the cost of delay.” This is because it meant Uisce Éireann “cannot permit development” in large parts of north and north west Dublin “where most of the development potential is”, he said.
In May, Uisce Éireann said that by 2028 it “may be unable to grant new connections to the wastewater network in parts of the Greater Dublin Area”.
Welcoming the decision on Thursday the utility company said construction works “will extend over a four-year period”. However, before building can start, certain “pre-construction statutory processes” needed to be completed.
Last December, Uisce Éireann applied to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for a Wastewater Discharge Licence.
“The construction of the Greater Dublin Drainage Project also requires both a Maritime Area Consent and a Maritime Usage Licence.”
These application will be submitted “in the coming months,” Uisce Éireann said. Once these consents are secured “a robust contractor procurement process for the construction of the project” would begin, it added.
