Sir, – Just about everyone is agreed on the need to conserve water and to pursue those who are perceived to be using excessive amounts.
Conserving water is, of course, to be recommended but only if it saves money. The lack of debate on the importance of water conservation has resulted in a great disservice to the country.
From the outset Irish Water anticipated a 10 per cent reduction in water usage after meters were installed. Those who were impressed by that figure could be forgiven. What Irish Water didn’t say was that only 34 per cent of throughput went to domestic use and therefore meters could only have an impact on 34 per cent, at most. That left us with a potential saving of 3.4 per cent. Later the energy regulator suggested that 6 per cent was a more realistic figure, which means that the best we can expect from the metering programme is a 2.04 per cent reduction in water throughput. To put a value on that, for the investment of €539 million in meters Irish Water can save €3.06 million per annum. I suspect the cost of reading the meters far exceeds that.
While Irish Water was focusing on saving this 2.04 per cent of throughput at enormous expense, it would appear that little was done to reduce the 49 per cent of leakage on the mains side of the system. Using the same formula that led me to €3.06 million, Irish Water could have saved €73.5 million by eliminating this 49 per cent leakage.
I will end by suggesting that if the Government wishes to meet the EU’s unreasonable stance on water charges, it should simply pass legislation which ensures that a fixed percentage of all the money collected in property tax is allocated to water and sewerage services. – Yours, etc,
LIAM FERRIE,
Menlo,
Galway.