Shannon water could be tapped for Dublin

A plan to tap the Shannon and the Barrow is one of a number of measures being mooted as a long-term solution to Dublin's burgeoning demand for water, according to the city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald.

He said municipal water schemes had little trouble with the quality of water supplies. Their difficulties related to repairing what were, in some cases, 100-year-old pipes and keeping up with the construction boom.

Plans are under way to expand the capacity of Ballymore-Eustace reservoir by about 25 per cent, but with a population forecast for the city of 1.7 million by 2011, other supplies will have to be found.

"There is a plan to tap the Barrow and the Shannon. In the case of the Shannon the talk is of the new motorway to Galway. It should be possible to provide a water-main alongside that. Water will definitely become a bigger problem if the supply side is not addressed," he said.

Elsewhere, other cities are meeting the same problems of refurbishing the network. In Cork city, where the population is now "fairly static" at 127,000, £40 million is required to refurbish the network, and work has begun, with £3 million being allocated this year.

In Galway the situation is described as "tight" but is expected to be eased when the new regional water scheme, with its reservoir at the Headford Road, comes on stream.

A refurbishment programme on the city's pipes was undertaken recently when the roads around Eyre Square were being paved. There is an ongoing water conservation programme which has as its main element the identification of leaks.

In Limerick high levels of growth have led the corporation to plan a major expansion of its Clareville treatment works at Castleconnell. The work, a pilot public-private partnership (PPP), is expected to double the capacity of the plant to extract and treat water from the Shannon. The corporation is also engaged in a programme of refurbishment of existing water mains.

Waterford is in a similar position, with supply being described as "very tight". A modern treatment works was built in the mid-1980s, and quality is not a problem, according to a spokesman. Again, a refurbishment programme is under way and £1 million is to be spent this year on improving distribution.