Shannon water for Dublin

Speaking of fridges....

I sometimes think we are frozen in time 😊

Calling it “whataboutery” avoids engaging with the actual issue, which is national water resilience. Telling people they “get what they deserve” for living in a floodplain is hardly constructive. People live and work along the Shannon for the same reason people live in coastal towns, cities and river valleys everywhere: history, livelihood and community. That doesn’t remove the State’s responsibility to manage infrastructure properly.

Dragging clan names and parishes into it and then jumping to phrases like “ethnic cleansing” is completely over the top. Nobody is proposing removing anyone from anywhere. A strategic abstraction of a small fraction of the Shannon’s average flow to support multiple regions is not cultural displacement. It is infrastructure planning in a modern state.

And this constant framing of it as “Dublin versus the environment” ignores a basic fact: most people in Dublin actually have a relatively small environmental footprint. Urban residents are far more likely to use public transport, walk or cycle. They live in apartments and terraced housing with smaller floor areas that require less heating. They share infrastructure, services and utilities at scale. Per capita energy use, land take and transport emissions are typically lower in dense cities than in dispersed rural settings so stop lecturing people that do less environmental damage than you do.

What would the country be like if we all dispersed from the urban centres to live like you? Turning rural Ireland in to a monster housing estate that's impossible to police or service with public transport and other services.

It is also not just “for Dublin”. Kildare, Meath, Wicklow and parts of the Midlands are all tied into the same supply strategy. This is about resilience for households, hospitals, industry and future growth across several regions.

If the concern is environmental impact, then argue the science. If the concern is flood management, then argue the modelling. But throwing around loaded language and historical grievance does not strengthen the case.

You can dismiss it as conspiracy theory nonsense if you want but that's a weak enough position IMO

If you have a genuine argument to make here, then you're welcome to make it - provide some data e.g. what the governance is around abstraction from the Liffey, what those rates are compared to this proposal and how that is / has been managed. It's a pretty patronising position to take to just dismiss any concern as being anti-Dublin or a conspiracy theory