The Water Institute attended the Water Ireland 2023 last week in Co. Laois. The aim of the conference was to bring together all the key stakeholders in the water services sector on the island of Ireland to discuss the challenges and opportunities facing the sector. This year’s conference had the theme of sustainability, in the widest sense: environmental sustainability; impact of climate change; delivering and managing water infrastructure in a sustainable manner.
The well-informed sessions were excellent and commenced with some very interesting presentations on European water policy, protecting Irelands Water resources and decarbonising Irelands water utilities. There was some really interesting research presented by Dr. Conor Murphy of Maynooth University on the impact of climate change on water supply and use in Ireland into the future.
The panel discussions were broad and touched on the impact and value of the citizen in monitoring and measuring water across Ireland which needs to be discussed more in terms of using this low-cost resource.
Both Xylem and Jacobs presented some of their case studies on Smart Water Networks and the day wrapped up with discussions on the medium to long-term outlook for water sector in Ireland.