The Government is wrong is its approach that schools must pay the full cost of water charges under the terms of the EU Water Framework Directive, the Labour Party has claimed.
According to education spokesman Ruairí Quinn, a note from the EU Commission to the Oireachtas Committee on Education makes it clear that recovery of total cost is not necessary to comply with the directive's aims of sending a "price-based" signal that water should be conserved.
Mr Quinn's comments come as the charges are to be be raised by Mairead McGuinness MEP at the European Parliament in Strasbourg this afternoon.
Under Article 9 of the Water Framework Directive, the imposition of costs for water are to come into effect effect in 2010.
Mr Quinn said Article 9.4 of the directive pointed out that a member state would not be in breach of the directive if its rules did not compromise the overall achievement of the directive.
As the aim of the directive was the conservation of scare or expensive resources, as opposed to the generation of revenue, charges could be initiated which encouraged conservation, without those charges being the full cost of water supplies. Money for those charges could be met through the school capitation grant.
Mr Quinn said Jorgé Rodríguez Romero, a senior figure in the commission's environment directorate general, agreed there was flexibility in the directive.
He also said there was a specific reference in the regulations which transposed the directive into Irish law, that local authorities must comply with any direction given by the Minister.
While the Government had argued that it had received legal advice that it must recover full costs, this was not the case. "The purpose of the directive is not to charge people for water for the sake of raising revenue, it's to send a price signal that would be met from the capitation grant."
In Strasbourg this afternoon, Ms McGuinness will tell the European Parliament that Irish Government attempts to "scapegoat" the Union over schools water charges may damage the passage of the Lisbon Treaty here.
Ms McGuinness is also seeking information on whether other member states successfully negotiated exemptions for their schools, and why the Irish Government failed to achieve similar exemptions for Ireland.
Ms McGuinness told The Irish Timesyesterday that the Irish Government had failed to understand the process and consequently failed to negotiate. The attempt to now "scapegoat the EU for the current schools water charges controversy is irresponsible in the extreme".
Ms McGuinness also criticised comments by Minister for Environment John Gormley that he wanted to encourage schools to conserve water. She said the schools should first be given the resources to pay for their existing usage.