Uisce Éireann will begin the procurement process to build the €1.3 billion Greater Dublin Drainage Project on Friday, almost 14 years after planning for the scheme commenced.
Minister for Housing James Browne is to update Cabinet colleagues on Wednesday on the next steps for the sewage treatment scheme.
Completion of the project is seen as crucial to ensuring adequate services infrastructure to allow the construction of thousands of homes in north Dublin, Meath and Kildare.
The development comes after Uisce Éireann announced in December it had reached an agreement with the parties who lodged a judicial review challenge against the scheme in September.
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It was the second such review case related to the project. A High Court challenge was lodged in 2020, two years after the initial application was made for the scheme in 2018.
Browne is expected to tell Cabinet colleagues that the State’s water utility company will start the “pre-qualification questionnaire” tender process on Friday.
It is essentially a shortlisting process in advance of the full tender process commencing in September.
Some preliminary works on the scheme will be carried out by Uisce Éireann in parallel with the tendering process. This could bring the completion date forward by 12 months. The main contract is expected to be awarded in 2028.
Meanwhile, Minister for Social Protection Dara Calleary is expected to tell the Cabinet that more than 100,000 employers have registered for the auto-enrolment pension scheme.
Under the My Future Fund initiative, more than 763,000 employees have been automatically enrolled, though a further 5,000 have voluntarily opted in. So far, more than €41 million of contributions have been invested in investment funds.
Minister for Media Patrick O’Donovan is to tell the meeting he will, in the coming weeks, be in a position to begin pilot age-verification proposals aimed at keeping children under the age of 16 safe online. A national digital wallet has been proposed as a means of verifying the age of social media users.
O’Donovan will bring a lengthy memo to Cabinet outlining his plan to make online safety a priority during Ireland’s European Union presidency later this year.
He is also to give an update on Government action over the dissemination of inappropriate, harmful and illegal images generated using artificial intelligence (AI). It follows controversy over AI nudification tools being used on the X platform.
He is also expected to tell colleagues he will ask media regulator Coimisiún na Meán to lead an information and awareness campaign. He will ask it to work with the AI Advisory Council on a common framework for classifying AI harms, including the generation, publication, and amplification of inappropriate images.
Minister for Agriculture Martin Heydon is to provide colleagues with an update on the latest situation regarding the bluetongue virus. The discovery of the virus in a cattle herd in Co Wexford last month led China to suspend recently resumed imports of Irish beef.
