Uisce Éireann, in partnership with Fingal County Council, is progressing a crucial project to upgrade and secure the water supply for over 350,000 customers across North County Dublin.

The €28 million investment involves the construction of a major new pipeline between Ballycoolin Reservoir and Swords, ensuring a more secure and reliable water supply to homes, businesses, hospitals and farms for generations to come.

The additional infrastructure will also enable social and economic development across the region, catering for current and future population growth.

The existing water supply network serving the North County Dublin Region depends on a single large-diameter, concrete water pipeline that was built in the 1960s, connecting Ballycoolin Reservoir to Swords.

The concrete water pipeline transfers approximately 60 million litres of water daily to North County Dublin but is operating beyond its capacity, resulting in low pressure across the region during periods of peak demand. As the pipeline is a critical piece of the supply network, it cannot be taken out of service to be upgraded.

To address this, Uisce Éireann is constructing a parallel, ductile iron pipeline that will have the capacity to distribute 90 million litres of drinking water per day at high pressure from Ballycoolin reservoir to homes and businesses across North County Dublin, including Dublin Airport.

This will allow available drinking water to be diverted to areas during emergency repairs or improvement works on the existing concrete pipeline, avoiding supply disruptions for customers.

To date, construction of the new pipeline has progressed without impacting customers’ water supply. Uisce Éireann is now set to commence the final phase of the project, with the new pipeline ready to be connected to the existing water network at a location on the outskirts of Swords.

Customers are being advised of a significant outage which will take place on Sunday, 26 February.

In order to safely facilitate the new connection, it will be necessary for the water supply to be switched off for a period of time until the connection works are completed.

To minimise disruption as much as possible to homes and businesses, the outage will commence this Sunday, 26 February from 1am until approximately 11am. It is planned that supply will begin to return after this time. However, due to the size of the pipes and network, it could take up to 10 hours for normal supply to return to all customers as water refills the network, especially for those on higher ground or at the end of the network.

Uisce Éireann has published details of the areas where the outage will impact customers across its region.

To support customers, Uisce Éireann and Fingal County Council will provide an alternative water supply at a number of locations until supplies have returned to normal.

Speaking about the critical nature of the project in terms of the GDA’s water supply, William McKnight, Uisce Éireann, commented:

“The water supply and demand balance in Dublin and the wider Greater Dublin Area is tight as we use almost every drop of water produced each day. The delivery of this project along with a number of other ambitious projects across the GDA will not only help increase the security and resilience of the drinking water supply, it will also provide the infrastructure needed to support the building of houses and schools and attract new industry to allow companies to expand and grow.”

The project is being carried out by GMC Utilities Ltd on behalf of Uisce Éireann, in partnership with Fingal County Council.