Ms Angela Ryan:

I will address the first point the Deputy raised on the need for the project. As Mr. Gleeson said in his opening statement, there is a huge footprint of water abstraction on the River Liffey. It is a relatively small river, the 19th largest river in the country. We rely on the River Liffey for 85% of the total volume of water produced in the greater Dublin area, with a population of over 1.7 million people. It is a very large footprint on a very small water body.

Yesterday, the volume of water flowing along the River Liffey through Leixlip dam and towards the bottom of the Liffey catchment was about 4 cu. l of water per second. Uisce Éireann abstracted 6 cu. l. That is the extent of our abstraction. It is very large compared to the size of the water body. Even under current conditions, without considering climate change, that is unsustainable.

Based on ESB hydrometric information, yesterday four cubic metres per second of water were flowing through Leixlip. Between the upper catchment and our abstractions at Leixlip, Uisce Éireann abstracted about 6 cu. l of water per second. It is an enormous amount of water relative to the size of the river. That only operates properly because the ESB releases water that is stored in Poulaphouca dam. That is the only way that water supply is currently possible. Poulaphouca dam, which is in the Wicklow mountains, has just over 100 days of real storage on the reservoir in the summer period. We are operating at very fine margins, even at present, within the supply. If anything were to happen, even short droughts for two or three months or not having appropriate rainfall during the summer, that would cause a lot of difficulty in those areas.

The two water treatment plants along the River Liffey operate at about 100% output every day of the year. There is no headroom whatsoever in the system. That causes us operational problems on a day-to-day basis. Where we have to carry out capital upgrades to plants, we cannot take those plants out of service for more than a few hours at a time. Even on an operational basis, it is very difficult for us.

As Mr. Gleeson said, if there is a pollution event on the River Liffey we have to allow that to pass through the river before we are able to abstract water again. The system is very vulnerable. It would not be a normal situation for a capital city across Europe to have a supply that has that level of risk. That is one of the primary drivers of the project. Irrespective of the level of leakage in the system and from where a new supply comes, we have to address those resilience issues across the region.

In terms of balanced regional development, Uisce Éireann has developed a strategic 25-year plan for all water supplies, our national water resources plan. We are not just looking at water supplies in Dublin, Cork, Waterford and Galway. We have looked at all 540 water supplies nationally. Each one of those water supplies, even for small towns, has been assessed in terms of the need for quality upgrades, whether there is enough quantity available, the reliability and sustainability of those supplies and whether we are abstracting too much water or they are potentially vulnerable to climate change.

With regard to balanced regional development, within our 25-year plan, when we calculated the supply demand balance or how much water we would need in the future, for every single water supply we took a policy on growth-----