Mr. Michael McNicholas:

We need to step back. Irish Water was not set up as a metering business, it was established as a utility to address the infrastructural deficits that exist. Its primary responsibility was to fix the problem with water and wastewater. One element of that was to install water meters but its primary responsibility is to do as Mr. Grant has outlined, that is, to get at the state of the infrastructure, put plans in place and deliver the infrastructure.

Separately, the question is whether meters installed incentivise conservation. All of the evidence will determine that if a person is charged for a service and knows how much he or she is using because it can be measured, it incentivises conservation. The key issue with conservation and meters is that if there is no direct charge for the service, it is more difficult to see how it can be conserved. Metering drives conservation for two reasons, namely, people have information about their usage and if they are paying for a service, they know they can make savings. There is a direct and simple correlation between a meter, a charge and conservation.