Schools are to be given a two-year exemption from paying full local authority water bills following a Government climbdown yesterday.
In a surprise move in the Dáil, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern announced that schools would be required only to pay a flat rate charge "appropriate to their size" for a transition period, possibly up to the end of 2009.
While details had yet to be worked out, the new charges would be much lower than those currently faced by some schools.
Only minutes before Mr Ahern spoke in the Dáil, senior Department of the Environment officials told an Oireachtas committee that flat-rate bills were impractical because costs varied in different counties.
Ministers decided yesterday, however, that schools should pay a flat rate linked to their size for the time being, while also implementing measures to cut water use.
Mr Ahern told the Dáil some recently-metered schools had faced higher bills than before because of leaks in their plumbing rather than because of over-consumption.
Pressed by Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny as to what schools should do with the water bills they had received, Mr Ahern said they should "hold them" and wait until the Government issued a more detailed statement.
The controversy over the charges, deemed to be a needless self-inflicted wound by some Ministers, has reopened the debate about primary school capitation grants, which are half the size of those for post-primary schools.
Ministers have now created a two-year breathing space to find a permanent solution, though the Government still does not know what flexibility it has to offer schools concessions under EU water conservation legislation.
Many schools have paid water charges since 1962, but other schools have paid nothing. One Islamic school in Navan has faced a bill, for example, while Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown Council abandoned a plan to levy its sister school in Clonskeagh.
Department of the Environment official Tom Corcoran told the Oireachtas Committee on Education that schools that were not charged before the introduction of the EU legislation in 2000 could not now claim they should not face charges because they had not faced them before. Mr Corcoran said there had been discussions on the issue between the Departments of the Environment and Education over the past two years.
The Government now wants to ensure that the exemption granted to schools will not lead to other bodies, such as creches and nursing homes, successfully seeking concessions.
