Water meters on way from next year, says Hogan

DOMESTIC WATER meters are to be rolled out to more than one million homes from early next year, and water services will ultimately be transferred to a new State utility company likely to be known as Irish Water.

Announcing the move yesterday, Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan said consumers should know “unlimited use of an expensive product at no charge is not going to continue”.

International experience and that of Irish group water schemes had shown metering and charges would reduce consumption, with a much-needed beneficial impact on the €1 billion the State spends annually on water services, he said. There would also be environmental benefits due to reduced water abstraction and less carbon emissions created by processing.

Mr Hogan said households would have a generous allowance of free water suitable for their needs, and anything above that for watering the garden or for a swimming pool, for instance, “would have to be paid for”.

At an inaugural national summit on water metering in Croke Park yesterday, Mr Hogan said it was envisaged that Irish Water would assume authority for production of the State’s drinking water, along with deployment of meters and arrangements for billing customers. Consultants were to be hired to advise on exact terms of reference for the new utility and will report by this October, he said.

Mr Hogan refused to speculate on the level of the new water charge but Tom Leahy, executive engineering manager with Dublin City Council, said household charges in the UK were of the order of €400 per year.

Mr Leahy welcomed Mr Hogan’s “positive” approach, pointing out that pilot testing by Dublin City Council revealed a large amount of leaks in the network were inside the boundaries of private properties, making them the responsibility of the owners. He recommended that water meters be placed outside or at the edge of the boundaries of private properties and not inside houses, so the responsibility and cost of water loss could be identified and clearly seen on householders’ bills.

Mr Hogan’s proposals for a new State utility company and the rollout of domestic water metering were criticised by Prof Richard Tol of the Economic and Social Research Institute. Prof Tol told the conference that creating “a new semi-State may be an easy way to create money”, but he insisted problems with the State’s water services would remain.

These, he said, would include quality issues, remarking that in 2006 two-thirds of the State’s water supplies were contaminated by E.coli. He instanced differences in approaches by local authorities, pointing out that South Tipperary produced 650 litres of water per day per resident, while neighbouring Co Kilkenny produced just 350 litres.

He said the introduction of metering was very likely to be unpopular, and the Government was proposing a major logistical operation to install more than one million water meters when it was unclear whether the State had “the right skills or the right people” to carry out the task. He said a high flat-rate charge with the option to opt in to a meter service might be a better proposal.

Brian McDonald of the National Federation of Group Water Schemes said metering water had a significant and immediate impact on water consumption. He said since metering had been introduced on group schemes there was much more focus on reducing consumption, in one case by as much as 90 per cent.

Mr McDonald said this had implications for river basin management and water catchment areas, as reduced demand meant a reduced catchment area with consequent implications for farmers and issues such as the use of nitrates. A lower catchment area might result in ability to spread fertilisers more widely, he said.