Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Social Democrats) | Oireachtas source

The way in which the Bill has been framed gives us a clue about how exactly this will play out. I do not believe anybody in the Chamber is opposed to water conservation. How one achieves it and how one invests public funds are important. The legislation suggests there is a requirement to have every household metered. If that is the case, it is to find excessive use. An awful lot of public money will go into putting meters into the ground.

7 o’clock

It is not just about putting meters into the ground, however. It is about taking readings from them, the administration that goes into that and maintaining a call centre. It strikes me that a lot of money is being used without achieving the greatest degree of conservation, that is, investing the scarce resources into dealing with the old Victorian pipes that are leaking and where we can calculate the loss incurred.

There is also very good telemetry available from some councils, which was well used in advance of Irish Water. There was a degree of controlled metering within estates that could pinpoint very large leaks. Essentially, when resources are scarce it comes down to a choice. If the approach is for there to be a continuation of the metering programme, that cannot happen without a decent cost-benefit analysis. I would like to hear what the Minister has to say in that regard. The danger is that we could use up very scarce resources and get no return in terms of conservation. There are other ways of doing it. There is a clue in how the legislation is framed. When one starts counting individuals in households, then we are getting into an extension of the mass metering programme involving maintenance, readings and administration. I would like to hear an estimate of how much that will cost or if a cost-benefit analysis has been done in terms of the return on the investment in terms of the 8% that are likely to find themselves getting a bill due to excess use.

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