FIANNA FÁIL TD and former minister Mary O’Rourke has said it would be an “act of vandalism” if Dublin City Council was to extract huge volumes of water from the Shannon to boost dwindling supplies in the capital.
Speaking in Limerick last night, Ms O’Rourke, president of the Shannon Protection Alliance, said Dublin should not prosper to the detriment of towns along the Shannon. She made her comments at a public meeting organised by the Limerick branch of the alliance.
The group was established last month in an effort to block plans by Dublin City Council to extract 500 million litres of water per day from an extraction point at Terryglass at the top of Lough Derg.
The group says this roughly equates to the amount of water that currently leaks from the Dublin water delivery system. It called on the Dublin local authority to fix its leaks and conserve water instead of “plundering” the Shannon, which supplies 1.5 million people living along its catchment area.
The original plan was to extract the water from Lough Ree but following massive political pressure from local communities in the Athlone area the plan was changed and Lough Derg became the favoured option for extraction.
“Where the river Shannon flows and how it flows is an act of nature, and to attempt to distort that, which is what the taking of water would be, is an act of vandalism,” said Ms O’Rourke.
“Dublin is the capital city and Dublin must prosper, but so must the rest of Ireland. Dublin should not prosper to the detriment of places like Athlone and Limerick and Nenagh, which have every right to prosper, and they won’t prosper if they are left literally high and dry.”
She said Dublin City Council had made no effort to fix its leaks which it should do before it tries to “pillage” water from the Shannon.
Outlining the threats specific to the Limerick area, the alliance’s branch spokesman Gerry Siney said Dublin could solve its water needs without recourse to the Shannon. He claimed insufficient consideration had been given to water conservation, groundwater abstraction, desalination, water metering, rainwater harvesting, and the use of grey water.
Former Limerick Green Party local election candidate Trish Forde Brennan, of the Limerick branch of the alliance, said the purpose of last night’s public meeting was to agree on a course of action.
“What we want is for people to make this a live issue in the sense that they start talking about it; they start asking relevant questions. We believe that if they do they will conclude that this is not the right or the best solution even for Dublin.”