Your complete guide to life in Swords

A major sewage facility planned for north Dublin could be delayed after the Minister for Public Expenditure, Brendan Howlin, agreed to have the scheme reviewed.

Fingal County Council last month named nine sites around the county (pictured left) – including two near Swords – which will potentially house a new regional wastewater treatment plant for the greater Dublin area.

The facility, a marine outfall and an orbital drainage system are planned to cater for wastewater for an estimated 700,000 population equivalent, with the majority coming from the Fingal area.

A 32 hectare site in Cloghran (3.3km south of Swords) and 36 hectares of land in Saucerstown (3.3km north-west of the town) are amongst the selected land parcels in question and the plans have been met with outrage by residents from across the county, who have attended a series of public meetings, including one in Swords last week.

Fianna Fáil’s Senator Darragh O’Brien raised the issue with Minister Howlin in the Seanad on Tuesday and warned the plant was ‘not needed’ and would cost ‘between €2.3bn and €2.7bn’.

‘I urge the Minister to re-evaluate that project, which does not stack up in terms of value for money,’ Senator O’Brien said. ‘Localised plants are the way forward rather than a massive Ringsend II.’

In response, Minister Howlin noted the ‘constructive points’ which had been made and said the issue of the greater Dublin drainage scheme had been raised on a number of occasions.

‘I am giving an undertaking now to the Senator that I will have it investigated,’ Minister Howlin said. ‘I was previously Minister in the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

‘There is a propensity for engineers to have big schemes. I have given the Senator an undertaking that I will have the matter reviewed.’

Deadline for submissions extended 

Annsbrook, Baldurgan and Cookstown (all near Ballyboughal), Clonshaugh, Newtowncorduff, (near Lusk) and Rathartan and Tyrrelstown Little (near both Rush and Lusk) are the other seven sites selected, each of which is bigger than the approximate 20 hectares required for the proposed new plant.

Up to 1,000 litres of sewage from Dublin and surrounding counties will be processed at the plant every minute once it’s operational, which would be similar to the capacity of the Ringsend plant, while an estimated 40 trucks per hour would be required to remove sludge from the facility.

Politicians from across the parties have also rejected the proposed facility, while calling for the establishment of smaller, localised plants to deal with waste in each individual area.

The council initially set a date of Friday, 18th November for submissions relating to the selected sites; however that deadline has been extended to Friday, 2nd December, with more than 1,100 written documents received so far.

Senator O’Brien welcomed Minister Howlin’s commitment to review the proposal, which he dubbed ‘the greatest threat to the quality of life and environment of north County Dublin’ and called on the Government to reject the plans.

‘I am pleased that the Minister has given this public commitment to review this scheme,’ Senator O’Brien added ‘I and thousands of people in north Dublin are completely opposed to this plan, which is totally unnecessary.

‘It is a pity that the Government Minister and his Fine Gael colleagues in the Dáil have remained completely silent on this matter. I am now calling on Fingal County Council and the greater Dublin drainage project team to suspend all planning and administrative work on this scheme immediately pending the completion of this review.’