The Government remains committed to continuing to support the group water sector as an important element of the water industry in Ireland, founded on co-operative community and voluntary engagement, and to invest in the sector to sustain and improve quality standards and performance.
Group water schemes set their own charges and are not regulated by the Commission for Energy Regulation (CER). There are a number of types of group schemes:
- Private schemes, which have no interaction with Irish Water, and
- Public schemes, which receive their water in bulk from public supplies, but manage their own networks and set charges for their customers; these schemes will remain non-domestic customers of Irish Water for the bulk purchase of water and current tariff arrangements, as applied by local authorities prior to 1 January 2014, will continue until non-domestic charges are reviewed by the CER.
There are also some group schemes, which have no management structures, and have had arrangements with local authorities, whereby the scheme members were effectively treated as public water users, with the local authority billing where appropriate and managing the network. These arrangements will continue to be applied by Irish Water unless the scheme members decide to fully reconstitute the group scheme.
My Department will work with the group water sector to produce a new investment programme lasting until the end of 2018 and to revise subsidy arrangements, so they are aligned as far as possible with the approach to subsidy for public schemes, but tailored to the particular circumstances of the group water sector. My Department has met with the National Federation of Group Water Schemes and has agreed the following general principles, under which to conduct the subsidy review:
- Fair treatment between drinking water consumers in the public and group sectors, taking into account the inherent differences in structure, funding and organisation between the sectors including the ability of individual schemes to set the price of water based on their own local circumstances;
- Recognition of particular cost structures in relation to the extent of networks in a rural environment with dispersed populations and the variation between publically sourced and privately sourced (DBO and Non-DBO) schemes;
- My Department continuing to recoup local authorities based on subsidy claims from group water schemes;
- Subsidies continuing to be tied to conditions which support customer charters, compliance, and optimal management and operational practices in the sector;
- Ensuring that the combination of capital grants and operational subvention provides schemes with the capacity to sustain drinking water quality improvements;
- Arrangements that are as straightforward as possible recognising the scale and administrative capacity of the sector; and
- Promotion of water conservation and source protection.
Households in the group water sector who respond validly to the Irish Water customer registration campaign will be eligible for the annual €100 water conservation grant.
