Irish Water is expected to confirm plans to store water from the River Shannon in a reservoir in Tipperary to supply Dublin and the Midlands.
The proposal being put forward would see more than 300 million litres of water being taken from the Parteen Basin near Limerick every day.
The company has been considering a number of options to deal with shortages in the Dublin region.
There has already been strong local opposition in North Tipperary when the suggestion was first put forward.
It is proposing the construction of a 165-kilometre pipeline from a reservoir on the Tipperary side, to the south of Lough Derg.
The utility said that this option will have the least environmental impact of the four it examined and is close to the Ardnacrusha hydro-electric power station.
Gerry Grant from Irish Water said that the detailed design process will start after a period of public consultation.
"The next steps now are to have a 10-week public consultation process where we will have quite intensive engagement with stakeholders right around the Shannon," he said.
"At the same time, we'll be finishing out some of the studies that we've been carrying out so far, surveys and so on, and we'll be beginning the process of detailed design, because we now have to establish the technical details of the works of extraction - the precise location for the treatment plant, for example."