Changes needed to meet housing targets
The Government's target of building 50,000 homes a year is possible, but would require some change, not only in terms of financing but also regarding "key enablers", according to Uisce Éireann.
Assets Strategy Manager with Uisce Éireann Angela Ryan said that they had contacted the Government late last year to say that it had sufficient funding to address just over 30,000 houses per year, but identified that additional funding would be needed if targets were to increase.
"We will need more money, but we will also need some other key enablers in that space, so we will probably need a little bit of reform of planning, we probably need greater advocacy for infrastructure projects, we need greater support across government to go behind these initiatives," she said.
"Also, there are some other capabilities that we need to address in the supply chain," she added.
"Uisce Éireann are quite good and have a really, really good track record on delivering projects on time and on budget – we have the solutions, we have the capability, I think we just need those key enablers and some additional funding in that space."
Speaking on RTÉ's News at One, Ms Ryan said that projects needed to move through planning much quicker in order to deliver major infrastructure.
"The Greater Dublin Drainage and the water supply project Eastern and Midlands region, if we don't get those projects moving it will be very difficult to sustain that level of housing ambition," she said.
Plans for homes in jeopardy
Amid reports that plans for 6,000 new homes in Dublin could be in jeopardy because of a lack of water and sewage infrastructure, she said that the Greater Dublin Drainage Project (GDDP) needs to be progressed.
Dublin City Council wants to build the homes in Ballyboggan, but the Irish Times has reported that Uisce Éireann has warned the council that a lack of water and sewage capacity could threaten the development. Ms Ryan said that demand for water and wastewater treatment is "really high at present".
"We've got a lot of growth within the system and also because the economy is doing quite well, there is a lot of commercial usage of water," she said.
She said that there are plans in place to address the increase in demand, but there are cases where those projects are getting delayed, causing "significant issues".
"Particularly on the wastewater side, the Greater Dublin Drainage Project is stuck in planning right now; we really need that project to be approved and we really need to start progressing that project so we can meet housing needs."
She said that there is an integrated water services network in place to serve the wider and greater Dublin area and added that wastewater capacity is becoming an issue "specifically on the northside".
"We have an existing wastewater treatment plant in Ringsend, but we also have some arterial sewers that lead into that treatment plant," she said.
"We're starting to reach the hydraulic capacity of those sewers."
Infrastructure needed to meet population growth
Ms Ryan said that the GDDP involves a new wastewater treatment plant in the northside of Dublin, but also an orbital sewer which would take the pressure off arterial sewers within the city.
"We need to get that progressed as quickly as possible, put in some local solutions such as pump stations, but we need to get that infrastructure in place so we can support the growth."
She said that the planning permission for the GDDP was approved in November 2018 and attributed the six-year delay to an appeal made to the High Court on a number of grounds.
"One of those grounds was upheld, it was just a procedural piece, some documentation between An Bórd Pleanála and the EPA, but what that has resulted in is significant delay to that project,"
"That project is still in the planning process six years later, we're hoping to get a decision on that over the coming months, but we really need to start progressing on with that project now."
Ms Ryan added that infrastructure will be needed to address the demands of a growing population.
"We're over-reliant on infrastructure that was built for this country when we had a population of 3.5 million people, we're now up to 5.1 million people, so we need to get those major projects progressing now."
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