Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I wish to be positive, as the Minister wants us all to be in a positive frame of mind today. If the Minister wants to stop water leaks and reduce costs, why has he not looked at district or block metering? I checked the price of this since I last discussed it with the Minister here. A district meter catering for 1,000 households costs between €3,000 and €4,000 to install. There is a computerised system going back to headquarters. Leaks are spotted within one minute and can be found within one hour with a detector. I have checked this with engineers who work in areas where such meters are installed. District metering works out at a cost of between €3 and €4 per household. Has the Minister looked at that?

On the question of the cost to the householder of Irish Water, the Minister says he does not know because that will be the responsibility of the regulator, which I accept. However, the Minister is being somewhat evasive on the issue. The figure can be obtained by adding the €330 million in capital to the €0.9 billion in current expenditure, which comes to €1.2 billion, and dividing that by the number of households, which is slightly below 1.3 million. I ask the Minister not to reply with lectures about charges in Northern Ireland. That is what the figure will be - I know what the total is, as does the Minister, without even having to take a calculator out of his pocket.

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