Ar an gcéad dul síos, gabhaim buíochas leis an Cheann Comhairle as cabhrú leis an Topical seo. I also thank the people who travelled here last week and who have been fighting this campaign in the interest of the community and common sense for more than a decade now. I thank Councillors Seamus Morris and Phyll Bugler, Emma Kennedy who has done massive work on this, anglers and others who came here last week, and the community activists and ordinary concerned citizens who are exposing the madness of this project. The proposed eastern and midlands water supply project seeks to abstract 300 million to 330 million litres per day from the River Shannon at Parteen Basin and transfer it to the Dublin eastern region. While securing a resilient water supply for Dublin is a legitimate national objective, the current proposal raises serious legal, environmental, financial and governance issues. None of us are anti-Dublin but we want common sense.
The project may breach international environmental laws, especially the water framework directive and habitats directive. Environmental impacts have been misrepresented through reliance on average flow statistics. This will lead to severe impacts during drought conditions. Better alternatives, including addressing leakage in Dublin - which everyone talks about - and groundwater development, have not been properly evaluated. The project externalises environmental risk to the Shannon catchment, while primarily benefiting Dublin. That is totally discriminatory. The environmental assessment does not exclude adverse impacts on protected habitats and species under EU law. The EU forbids those. In its current form, the project exposes the State to significant legal risk, ecological damage and long-term policy inconsistency and that must be looked at as well.
The 2% claim is misleading. The project documentation repeatedly states that the abstraction represents approximately 2% of the Shannon's average flow. This statistic is misleading and scientifically untrue. Ecological impacts are determined by flow conditions, not long-term averages. Evidence presented in submissions shows that during dry summer flows, extraction could remove 25% to 30% of available flow and during extreme drought conditions, which we experience pretty often in Ireland, it could remove up to 38% to 40% of available flow. This is not a marginal intervention by any measure. The wool is being pulled over people's eyes. It is not acceptable to say the abstraction is 2%. The environmental law it will breach is the water framework directive. The EU law provides that member states prevent deterioration of water bodies. The Shannon system is already classified with a below good status in several stretches. The application does not demonstrate with certainty that a deterioration will not occur. If deterioration cannot be excluded, the project must pass the strict Article 4(7) derogation test by showing overriding public interest, no better environmental alternatives and all mitigation measures implemented. It is failing in all those important areas.
Regarding the habitats directive, we have been told about how it affects anybody who looks for planning permission at home for anything. We have to look at all those issues. Why would we allow Uisce Éireann do what it likes? It has a blank cheque. We are going to have the national children's hospital No. 2? It used to be a small amount of money but now we are talking about between €3 billion and €10 billion to put two big pipes up through the middle of the country when it is totally unnecessary. Fix the leaks in Dublin, use common sense and save the water. This is treated water and up to 40% of it is being leaked on a daily basis.