Uisce Éireann is confident the biggest water supply infrastructure project in the State’s history will be delivered on budget and on time, an Oireachtas committee has heard.
Its Water Supply Project for the Eastern and Midlands Region proposes to extract water from the Parteen Basin in the lower Shannon and pipe it 174km to a new treatment plant in Peamount, Co Dublin, before distributing it to the capital and surrounding counties. The proposal has been opposed by some landowners and communities around Parteen and along its route.
Senior officials from the State-owned utility company appeared at the Joint Committee on Infrastructure on Wednesday and said they were confident the project would be “comfortably” completed for a budget of between €4.6 billion and €5.9 billion.
Discounting the likelihood of the ‘in extremis’ estimate of €10.3 billion it has modelled, Uisce Éireann said that would occur only if everything went wrong and it became a multi-decade project.
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And while there were certain factors in relation to the time line that was outside of its control, Uisce Éireann said it was confident that “shovels would go into the ground” in 2028, with the project being completed by 2032.
The Uisce Éireann delegation was led by director of infrastructure delivery Maria O’Dwyer, along with programme director Mike Healy, senior programme manager Gary Gibson and asset strategy senior manager Mairéad Conlon.
Asked by Labour TD Conor Sheehan how Uisce Éireann would protect taxpayers in a project that was “another bottomless pit”, Healy said there was a “significant amount” of contingency built into the estimated cost, even with geopolitical events such as the war in Ukraine and an increase in inflation.
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Referring to the figure of €10.3 billion, he said it had about €7 billion in contingencies built in.
He said the modelling for the higher figure was for very complex and difficult projects, such as ones that went through mountains. He said Uisce Éireann had experience building this type of infrastructure but not on that scale. He said the treatment works would not be bigger that the existing one at Ballymore Eustace.
“The element of risk is reasonably low compared to other projects,” he said.
“We are confident with our range of €4.6 billion to €5.9 billion, we are comfortable that we will achieve that.”
Asked by Sinn Féin TD Louis O’Hara if Uisce Éireann could stand over its position that the maximum abstraction of water would amount to 2 per cent of the Shannon’s flow through Parteen, Gibson said that was the case.
He said the company had modelled the worst drought event in recent history (the summer of 2018) and added additional climate change impacts. He said in that eventuality, flow levels would still be maintained within the normal levels required by ESB for its Ardnacrusha hydroelectric station farther downstream.
The committee was told that with planning documents running to 30,000 pages it was the biggest such application made in the State. Committee chair Seán Fleming of Fianna Fáil expressed surprise that the project would amount to supply for 350,000 homes, or a third of the total water supply for that entire region once completed and asked if it would be adequate for a rising population.
The officials said the project would supplement the water supply for the capital and not replace it. Conlon also said the work would be done in tandem with the programme to reduce leakages from pipes, another measure that would increase available supply.
O’Brien agreed with Fleming that usage per individual in Ireland was much higher now than it was 20 years ago.
She said Uisce Éireann needed the support of politicians in “engaging the public in a conservation campaign”.
“We are asking everybody to value and appreciate water more,” she said.
In the opening statement, O’Brien said the current abstraction rate from the river Liffey was 40 per cent.
“In practical terms, the system is operating beyond capacity and with limited resilience,” she said.
The level of reliance on a single source was a real risk, she said.
“A contamination event, drought or operational failure could lead to widespread restrictions or outages.”
