Dáil Éireann Debate, Wednesday - 17 September 2014
33. Deputy Seamus Healy asked the Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government the number of water meters due to be installed on a county basis; the total number installed to date by county; the total number of houses that will not have a water meter installed at the end of the process; the way it is intended to deal with apartments; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [34316/14]
View answerThe Water Services Act 2013 provides for the establishment of Irish Water as an independent subsidiary within the Bord Gáis Éireann Group and assigns the necessary powers to allow Irish Water to undertake the water metering programme. The meter installation programme commenced in August 2013 and Irish Water has indicated to my Department that it expects to have 450,000 meters installed by the end of 2014, with at least 1. 1 million properties expected to be metered by mid-2016.
Irish Water has awarded meter installation contracts on a regional basis and to date over 400,000 installations have been completed. A breakdown of the installations by region is set out in the table below.
Meter installations by region
|
Region |
All |
North West |
West |
South West |
North East |
Dublin City |
Midlands |
County Dublin |
South East |
|
Meter |
403,107 |
46,342 |
41,278 |
42,354 |
49,687 |
46,818 |
61,492 |
72,652 |
42,484 |
Of the domestic properties connected to public water supplies, it is estimated that approximately 300,000 properties will not be metered as part of the current phase, due to the cost or technical difficulty of doing so. This figure will be validated following the completion of the Irish Water customer validation exercise and the completion of a pre-installation survey of households connected to public water supplies being carried out by local authorities. These properties would include apartment blocks, other multi-occupancy buildings and houses with shared service connections.
Irish Water has commissioned a study on possible approaches to metering properties that are not part of the current metering programme, including apartments and properties with shared service connections. On the basis of this report, it has been agreed to incorporate 48,000 apartments, identified by the report as being easily metered, into the current metering programme. The advancement of any further phase will be a matter for consideration by the Commission for Energy Regulation based on proposals from Irish Water.
The proposed approach to charging has been outlined by Irish Water in a water charges plan which it has submitted to the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER) in line with the provisions of the Water Services (No. 2) Act 2013. The CER is responsible for approving the plan, taking account of a Ministerial policy direction issued to the CER in July 2014, in accordance with section 42 of the Water Services (No. 2 ) Act 2013. Against this background, the CER are proposing to approve a water charges plan which provides that properties not connected to a meter would be billed on the basis of a scheme of assessed charges based on occupancy. The CER recently held a public consultation on the water charges plan and it is currently reviewing submissions received, in advance of making a final determination later this month. Full details of the CER public consultation are available on its website, www.cer.ie.
The policy direction of July 2014 requires the CER to review assessed charges in the light of emerging data on metered consumption to ensure that the assessed charges remain as close a proxy for actual usage as possible.
Irish Water has established a dedicated team to deal with representations and queries from public representatives. They may be contacted via email to oireachtasmembers@water.ie or by telephone on 1890 278 278.
