The conservation baby is likely to be thrown out with the bathwater

With the deluge of bad news that has swamped Irish Water, it is easy to forget that conservation was supposed to be at the heart of the project.

The introduction of charges and meters was first mooted by John Gormley, Green Party leader and minister for the environment, more than five years ago. His emphasis was on incentivising people to conserve more by charging them less.

Even in the weeks following the summer confirmation of the charging regime, there was much talk about consumers being able to cut their bills significantly by using less water. Taoiseach Enda Kenny rowed in with the suggestion that we could save a packet by turning off the taps when brushing our teeth.

All the talk of canny consumers cutting costs could well dry up from today after a reduced water charging regime of substantially less than €200 per household is confirmed.

Technically, homes with a meter installed will still be able to reduce their bills if the value of water used is lower than the assessed caps of €160 for one adult households and €260 for households of more than one adult (before the €100 rebate). But it’s hard to see many households coming in under the new limits while retaining a fairly basic usage level.

The average seven-minute shower uses about 50 litres of hot water, while power showers can use up to 175 litres. According to Irish Water, two-thirds of people have a power shower. So they need 63,800 litres of water each year to maintain a basic level of hygiene.

Brushing your teeth (with the tap off, per Enda) will use another 730 litres a year.

The average washing machine uses up to 65 litres of water per cycle, so one weekly wash per household will use up another 3,380 litres of water each year.

Flushing a toilet, meanwhile, will require 10 litres of water. So the single-person household is likely to need about 20,000 litres annually for this fairly basic function, when hand-washing is added to the picture.

Shaving will need at least 1,000 litres each year, while the odd cup of tea and maybe some water to drink will require at least 2,000 more litres. Washing dishes will need another 1,000 litres and more if a dishwasher is used. Cooking will need 500 litres. Just one slow dripping tap will see you go through 1,500 litres.

All told then, this takes a single person household’s basic usage to just under 93,000 litres. With the rate at which we will have to pay for water set at half a cent a litre, a person with an allowance of 30,000 litres is very unlikely to come in under the capped rate.