Shannon water for Dublin

Most countries in Europe promote better regional development we have 30% of our population in Dublin, it's rare enough for a country to have such a huge proportion of the country in one concentrated area so resources aren't going to be as strained

We also have a huge concentration of Europe's data centres, again based in Dublin, so need a greater proportion of our water to go there

It's disingenuous to suggest that our extortionate energy prices have little to do with three hundred thousand people struggling to meet their energy bills.

Don't know where to begin on the second. I'm not talking about international prices, I'm talking about the national demand driving up our household bills. Electricity generation is is a big user of gas. We have the highest per capita gas-fired generation in Europe. This amazingly excludes another 6GW in the planning pipeline. We also have the highest overall level for such payments, 70% higher than the next-ranked in Britain. Throw in the chart below and you've a gold rush for subsidised developers to supply their gas-driven DCs. It's supply and demand, except the contributors have decoupled from what should be a fair equation, and the consumer loses out.

Anyway this is off topic, someone was acting as if our DC situation is good for the world without consequence for the host which is clearly not the case.

Ok grand, let's reboot.

Because it's been modelled over every year since Ardnacrusha opened to 2015. Every winter/spring the parteen/Derg basin is raised by half a metre to give an operating band of depth for the power station/river over the Summer.

Level up.. power station in use, level drops..power station not in use. The level has never dropped below the half metre band, either in reality or with the pipeline modelling.

So Lough Derg has been maintained above it's original level since Ardnacrusha opened. It's constantly monitored and the pipeline takeoff will obviously be added to the calculations.

Therefore it's simply not feasible imo that an either/or pipeline/river flow would ever be an issue regardless of any drought. Worst case scenario is Lough Derg would drop below the band, but then it would be only starting to go below it's original level.

As I linked earlier the lake levels were normal as of July 2018, probably the only lake in the country that was. That's because it has it's own failsafe.

Legitimate questions but the concerns have already been addressed by what standardg60 and John Rambo have posted.

Lough Derg level didn't drop in 2018, a dry spell we may not see for decades. I has been raised and controlled for a century by the ESB. The half metre is months and months of supply for the water plant even if all rivers into Derg were to dry up (hypothetical for absurd comparison only).

To address your passenger cap analogy. The EPA licence and regulate the abstraction. They won't have a profit motive like the DAA do. In fact it is the opposite scenario, the EPA are solely interested in protecting the river.

Currently backstopped by legislation that 10 has to go down the original river, so in the 2018 dry scenario a weir would have to be lowered to allow 10m3/s down the original river route while say 3m3/s is being abstracted.

https://www.eesi.org/articles/view/data-centers-and-water-consumption

Approximately 80% of the water (typically freshwater) withdrawn by data centers evaporates, with the remaining water discharged to municipal wastewater facilities.

I thought it was a pretty well known fact that Data cetres use large amounts of water. It's not a worthless or fake claim at all. It's just a plain fact.

Some in warmer climates will use more than ones based in a more temperate climate like ours but they still use massive amounts of water.