Irish Water is responsible for the water meter installation programme. I understand that Irish Water is committed to reusing previously installed meter boxes where possible. Irish Water’s contractors examine each case of a pre-existing meter box to establish if existing meter boxes can be reused. To date, in excess of 50,000 meter boxes have been reused nationwide. However, in this instance it was not possible to reuse the pre-existing boxes as they were flooded with water and therefore were unsuitable to have a meter installed.
Since assuming responsibility for the public water and waste water infrastructure Irish Water require that all meter boxes installed on the network be sealed to prevent this issue from arising.
The occurrence of pre-existing domestic water meters is rare as domestic water users have not been metered or billed for their usage outside of Group Water Schemes and some mixed use premises. The domestic meters being installed by Irish Water have to be compatible with the meter reading and billing systems technology of Irish Water. However, in the case being stated here, this issue of the removal of water meters did not arise as there were no meters installed in the pre-existing meter boxes.
