Mr. Jerry Grant:

The policy framework in the three jurisdictions was different. The decision to install domestic meters in Ireland in advance of and as part of the process of bringing in user based charges for water was political. The authorities in Scotland have not gone down that road. There is a charging system which involves a flat charge. Like all of the English water companies, Welsh Water had a flat charging system, or a system related to the rateable valuation. However, all of the companies in England and Wales have gradually started to encourage metering. In Wales the level of household metering of water usage is up to 50%, while Anglian Water is metering the water usage of 80% of its customers, as water is seen as a very critical resource. The water companies are introducing metering on an opportunistic basis for new builds or where they are rehabilitating water mains and so on. Let me repeat that there are significant benefits.

In an urban area the district meter typically meters water usage in 1,000 to 1,500 properties or premises. It tells exactly how much water is going into the district. If one knows the level of domestic and non-domestic consumption, one can calculate with a reasonable degree of accuracy the likely leakages from the public system. If one sends out crews with acoustic devices during the day - it is more efficient to do so at night time - they can find leaks in the public system and also evidence of high flows through a stop cock to a premises. One can follow up with a waste notice process, as I outlined to Deputy Paul Murphy, or one could apply an excess charge. Currently, where they show up on our meters, we write to the customers concerned.

The district meter facilitates the leakage programme. The idea that a substantial part of one's operating resources should be diverted to chase household leaks does not make sense if there are domestic meters. With ten to 12 readers, in any one quarter we can read 800,000 to 900,000 meters and find 50,000 to 60,000 leaks on premises. Nothing like that number could be found if we were using operational crews. We would be lucky to find a number in the hundreds. Crews would be diverted away from the very job we would wish them to do, which is to find leaks in the public system. The two are complementary. It is not a competition between district and domestic metering.

District metering is an imperative for us. Ireland has already invested a lot of money in it. The greater Dublin area was metered in the 1990s. I do not know the exact amount of money that was invested, but it was in the tens of millions of euro. About €130 million was invested in district meters across the country between 2000 and 2010. We now have a substantial infrastructure of district meters, more in fact, per premises, than in Scotland. Irish Water has been bringing them up to scratch because about 50% were not working. A lot of the valves had been breached and we installed a lot of pressure valves. In the past two years we have spent tens of millions of euro in revamping the infrastructure to make it ready and fit for use. We have also installed a pressure management system and this year will install a national leakage management system to collect all of the information. Our primary focus is on identifying leakages in the public system. I am comparing that with what can be done if there are also 900,000 domestic meters which also help to find a lot of leakages.