Mr. Jerry Grant:

There are approximately 4,400 district meter areas. Much of that work was done pre-Irish Water by local authorities under capital funding provision from the Department. We took them over in 2014 and have spent a lot of money on getting them up and running as much of the capability had gone over the previous five years. We are busy now putting in pressure management and other supports to try to make them more effective. Some local authorities had a practice of requiring meters as part of planning permissions for new builds. There are a number of local authority meters in the ground on newer properties throughout the country. I know they were certainly installed by householders in north Tipperary.

In terms of savings, we ended up spending €465 million on meter installation. The other €148 million unspent in that programme has been reallocated with the consent of the Department primarily for the provision of infrastructure and connections to support new development. Some of it is being allocated to revamp non-domestic meters.

They have been installed for 12 to 15 years. There are difficulties with them. Many meters are not working so we will be looking to replace them. We will also be looking to use the same technology to read those more efficiently in future. There will be some investment and that is part of our capital programme.

The opt-in choice is always available to people and it was available during the metering project. We are not putting in any meters at the moment but we were using opt-in because people had contacted us pointing out that we had passed them by, but they wanted a meter. We were picking those up.

Reference was made to maintenance. Leaving aside any charging options, normal day-to-day or year-to-year reading of meters is going on. We have allocated between €2 million and €3 million for the maintenance of the meter stock. This does not include any replacements because replacements will not arise for a long time, except in the case where meters have been damaged. There have been such cases and we have replaced them. A cost arises from reading any meters that do not give a signal at the end of a quarter. The meters are investigated to see if they have failed for some reason. This can turn up a problem. They are being maintained. In the context of the running cost every year, the gain from the exercise is all the savings we are able to get through the first-fix scheme.