Ms Cathy Mannion:

A question was asked about charges for customers who do not have meters, in light of the fact that there will be 1 million such customers in October. We were asked whether we have investigated other ways of calculating the unmetered tariffs. That is part of the policy direction request we have made to Irish Water. We have asked it to do that analysis and provide it to us as part of its submission to us. I know from a preliminary view of other markets that it is based on property value in the UK, for example. We did not think that was an appropriate way to proceed because there is no link between the value of a property and how much water is used in that property. I am aware from our discussions with Irish Water that there is no link between the amount of water one uses and the size of a house or the number of bathrooms, toilets and bedrooms in that house. That is why we are coming to the view that occupancy seems to be the closest indicator we can find. We have asked Irish Water to gather a lot of data about the number of people living in houses, their ages and how many of them are children or older people to see whether there is a link between such factors and water usage . That is why we will have the rebate system in place. If we get the assessed charge slightly wrong, a rebate will apply. The information about how much water people use is only coming in now. If one moves from an assessed charge to a metered charge, and one's metered charge is lower, one will get a rebate. People should get some comfort from that. They will be no worse off by virtue of having started off on the assessed charge.