Sir, – It is disappointing that Kevin O’Sullivan’s report on the many arguments to support Irish Water’s proposal to pipe water from the Shannon to Dublin does not also cover the arguments against it (“Dublin is running out of water. Can the Shannon help?”, Housing and Planning, March 9th).
The credibility of Irish Water’s pipeline proposal is highly questionable. To justify its proposed pipeline, Irish Water relies on the sort of administrative sophistry rejected by the people in last weekend’s referendums.
Specifically, Irish Water has redefined Ireland’s regions and invented a new “Eastern and Midlands” region that stretches from Dublin to Limerick. It then states that is will “interconnect” water resources of the “urban areas in the region”.
It is clear that Dublin and Limerick are not in the same region. This new region is not consistent with the definition of regions by Ireland’s regional assemblies or Project Ireland 2040. Limerick is part of the Southern Region and more particularly part of the Mid-West region. The invention of a new region by Irish Water has no factual basis and is designed to facilitate an outcome that favours the building of its pipeline.
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The solution to Dublin’s water is to fix Dublin’s leaky water pipes. These leaky pipes do not threaten foreign direct investments investments (FDI) or new plans to house all of our growing population in Dublin, as advocates of the pipeline would have us believe. Instead, we can locate FDI projects and new population in our regional cities. This will relieve the pressure on Dublin and enhance our economy by growing our regional cities to metropolitan scale.
As it happens, the Mid-West is the perfect location for one of these cities, and it has plenty of water. – Yours, etc,
DAVID GEARY,
Limerick.