THE CHAIR OF the Board of Uisce Éireann has said that Dublin’s drinking water supply is going to be “very tight” over the next few years due to delays with major projects.

Jerry Grant said that progress has also been slow for the Shannon Pipeline Project, which will take water from the river via a 170km pipeline through Tipperary, Offaly, and Kildare to Peamount in Dublin.

Ireland’s growing population means the amount of wastewater generated in greater Dublin is projected to increase by over 50% in the next 25 years.

However, Grant believes that it’s “very unlikely” that the Shannon project will get planning permission within the next three years, meaning that Dublin is “going to be in a very tight situation from a drinking water point of view” until the pipeline is completed.

“We’re looking at options to try and get incremental amounts of water back from leakage, or squeezing a bit more out of the Liffey,” he said.

“The reality is that it’s going to be a very tight scenario.”

Grant also hit back at comments by Tánaiste Simon Harris for linking delays in the delivery of housing to problems with water infrastructure – saying that building homes is more complex than providing water connections.

The Fine Gael leader said last week that it is “not acceptable” during a “housing emergency” that some homes are not getting planning permission due to a lack of water connections.

In response, Grant says that Uisce Éireann “has never seen more judicial reviews” that are causing delays to housing projects, which he claims are making the delivery of new homes “very challenging”.

“Every one of these is causing significant delay to projects and adding cost and deferring the opportunity to build houses,” he told The Journal.

The government has set a goal of building 50,000 to 60,000 homes a year to reach a total of 300,000 new homes by 2030.

However, the Central Bank has predicted that housing completions for this year will fall short of the government’s target.

Grant said it won’t be possible to make up the shortfall by just providing additional water connections.

“There’s got to be strategic leadership decisions around the zoning … that we then can focus and target our input on those areas [where housing is being built],” he said.

“We cannot cover every town and village in the country, that’s for sure, or far from it.”

Jerry Grant, Chairperson of the Uisce Éireann Board, the Dublin Port Company, and the High Voltage Forum Conor McCabe Conor McCabe

He also suggested that the problem could be alleviated by making use of buildings that are already connected to the water system, such as those located in derelict sites in urban areas.

There were over 100,000 properties listed as vacant or derelict as of last summer; however, over half of Ireland’s local authorities are failing to collect money from owners of derelict sites.

“I think part of the difficulty of developing derelict sites is very often that it costs a good deal, and the owner isn’t in a position to fund it,” said Grant.

“But if you look at the true costs of servicing greenfield sites [undeveloped land], when you take into account water sewage, roads and all of the other things, actually in the round it’s better value to resurrect the derelict sites in town centres.

“They don’t create a big burden on the utility.”