Eoin Ó Broin (Dublin Mid West, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

At the last meeting with Scottish Water, Deputy Brophy raised the question of Scotland's allegedly high average water charges. The representative from Scottish Water said he did not recognise the figures. When I checked it later, I found the average household charge for domestic water in Scotland is €406 a year and it has one of the lowest average household charges of all northern European countries, in some cases by €300 or €400 a year.

We have to make decisions around the excess charge. The more factual information we have on it the better. Current usage according to Irish Water is 111 litres per person per day, when ones takes out the outliers. Even with the outliers, it is 123 litres per person per day. That is substantially below the OECD average. What is the CER's view on that, particularly given the fact that many of those OECD countries already have metering and metered charges? It is more than half the figure for the US or Canada and is significantly lower than many other OECD countries.

Has any modelling been done by the commission or by Irish Water on what an excess charge might look like, how many households it might apply to and on the revenue intake versus the cost of administering the charge? The Department stated on the last day that it is not just about the money it brings in but also about changes in behaviour. There are several longitudinal studies of the way in which meters do or do not affect water consumption behaviour. Has the CER knowledge of that research?

Mr. Jerry Grant said that due to having a leak alarm on individual meters, 7% of houses have a leak while 5% are using a third of all water supplied to households. Knowing what we now know, was €500 million for universal water metering an effective use of that resource or would there have been a better way to target that money, given how small a number of households appear to have domestic household leaks?