It has been a week of stupendously bad news for Uisce Éireann, and I have seen little to no commentary on it.
Listening to Morning Ireland for my sins late last week, I was shocked to hear that there were still hosepipe bans in place in a number of counties around Ireland, and even more shocked to hear that some of those bans were being extended. I assume, reader, that if you weren’t aware of that fact already, if you weren’t one of the poor souls having to conserve water in a country that’s regularly inundated with rain, you’re probably shocked too.
The extension of those water conservation orders – into October – is necessary according to Uisce Éireann because of critically low water levels in the lakes supplying those areas.
To take one example, Uisce Éireann’s monitoring of Lough Bane, which supplies the affected Kells-Oldcastle area, indicates that the level of the lake remains very low. “Despite recent rainfall, the long-term effects of a dry autumn, winter and spring – followed by the warmest summer on record – have left the lake significantly depleted,” a statement says on the matter.
Water Operations Manager in Meath Michael Cunniffe urged those in the area to “continue to play their part by conserving water over the next four weeks”, because if they do so, “we can reduce the potential of restrictions and outages over the coming weeks and months”. That last part is the kicker – by reducing their water usage over the next month, people won’t guarantee a return to an unrestricted water supply, but rather will lower the possibility of further restrictions and outages after that.
So despite the torrential rain many have experienced in different parts of the country over the past, well, always, it’s still the case that water supply can’t be guaranteed because of how long it takes water levels to stabilise in many of the supplying lakes, especially with growing numbers of people drawing on those supplies.
Meanwhile, another recent news item lamented the fact that the Dublin wastewater system is woefully outmatched in the face of Dublin’s rapidly increasing population.
“Built to cater for a population of about half a million people the Dublin wastewater system is now catering for three times that number of people,” that report read. Uisce Éireann, naturally, was on hand to express its worry about its impending inability to cope with the strain.
The solution to this is the Greater Dublin Drainage Project, which features a number of elements, none of which has started yet. To be fair, that isn’t Uisce Éireann’s fault – the project has been hobbled by planning objections and legal challenges since its inception a number of years ago.
However, despite being aware of this, according to Uisce Éireann, there is no “Plan B”. This is despite a critical state of affairs. If they don’t update and ramp up Dublin’s wastewater treatment capacity, it will be impossible to connect new homes and businesses to the sewage network in certain areas of Dublin within the next couple of years – which obviously poses a challenge to the Government’s overly-ambitious, despite their modest scope, home-building plans.
Which is where the third piece of poor Uisce Éireann PR this week comes in. Just today, the Central Bank warned that water and energy infrastructure constraints will reduce the number of homes built in the coming years, and as such, it lowered its projection for housing completions for 2026 and 2027:
“In its Quarterly Bulletin 2025:3, released this morning, the Bank said completions were expected to reach 32,500 in 2025, before rising to 36,000 in 2026 and 40,000 in 2027. It warned that constraints in water and energy networks would be “marginally more binding” on the number of dwellings delivered.
“The projection for housing completions has been revised downwards for 2026 and 2027,” the bulletin stated.
“Constraints in water and energy infrastructure are expected to be marginally more binding on the number of dwellings that can be delivered in those years.”
So things aren’t looking too good for Uisce Éireann, which is struggling to ensure reliable services for both that which flows into the home and that which flows out of it.
An attentive reader might note that what lies at the heart of each of these pressing issues for Uisce Éireann – difficulty stabilising water supply in the face of natural demand, difficulty maintaining wastewater services in Dublin, and difficulty getting new homes and businesses connected to those services – is the surging population growth the country is experiencing.
Funny enough, it seems to this writer the best thing Uisce Éireann could do to take some of the pressure off itself is start pressing the Government to do something about that particular issue.