Seán Fleming (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

-----which the Government does not plan to use until 2022. Furthermore, this is the cost of installing meters into only half of the houses in Ireland. Wait until we hear how much it intends to spend on putting water meters into the remaining housing. This is only phase 1.

The Government refers to conservation measures, a most important aspect of the Irish Water debate. The reality is that approximately 84% of water leaks are from the public mains, not from private property. This is the reason Irish Water stated recently, "The real bull work of water conservation and leakage management is to have district meters. We have about 10,000 of them across the country." The councils already had them in place as part of their infrastructure. It should be clear that 84% of the leaks are not on people’s private property and that no amount of domestic water meters will reduce the leakage from the public mains.  That means 84% of the leakage of treated water could be reduced without having to install domestic water meters.

This begs the question as to why the Government wasted this €500 million in the first instance. The sheer scale of this waste is unprecedented. Despite all of the public relations, Irish Water is a super-quango that must be closed down. Fine Gael and the Labour Party can no longer hide behind the skirt of the troika with regard to Irish Water. This quango was a Fine Gael policy cooked up in 2009. It is now time to stop water charges and to abolish Irish Water.

As I mentioned already with regard to the €3 increase in the pension rate, that money will be whittled away with one visit to the chemist to fill a prescription.

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