Paddy Burke (Fine Gael)

I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Noel Ahern, to the House and thank him for addressing this matter. I have raised it because a number of boards of management have told me recently that national and secondary schools and third level colleges are paying different charges for water in different parts of the country. In many cases, especially in certain areas, a huge burden is being placed on boards of management to raise the necessary funds to provide water at their schools.

As the Minister of State well knows, new sewerage charges will be introduced shortly and therefore the boards of management, irrespective of the types of schools they run, will have to pay both water and sewerage charges. The Government is now paving the way for public private partnerships and design, build and operate schemes. When these are in place, a capital charge and a running charge will be imposed on businesses and all non-domestic users, including the different types of schools. As the Minister of State knows, these schemes will operate on a contractual basis over 20 or 25 years or some other designated period.

I do not understand how boards of management will put up with this in cases where a new sewerage scheme is put in place. The EU directive on the provision of sewerage facilities stipulates that a charge will have to be paid. Thus, the schools will have to pay both a water charge and a sewerage charge. The sewerage charge will be on a water-in water-out basis. Most schools are paying €3,000 to €5,000 annually at present and in some cases they are paying as much as €20,000. In this case they will be faced with a double charge for sewerage services.

As the Minister previously pointed out in the House, best practice for sewerage schemes is represented by the Ringsend scheme, which covers a significant part of Dublin and Kildare. Many schools are being serviced by the Ringsend development alone and they will be faced with capital charges and running costs for sewerage and water services. If they are faced with huge bills for water charges at present, which are likely to be paid on a metered basis soon, they will be faced with double amounts in terms of sewerage charges. Boards of management will be faced with a huge task to raise funds to pay for water and sewerage charges for years to come. They will become glorified fundraisers.

Colleges and schools should not be treated as non-domestic users. The Department should provide an annual grant to the various local authorities to cover those costs. If this does not happen and the local authority needs to waive the charges in the cases of colleges and schools, this shortfall will have to be taken up by the business community, which would place a very unfair burden on it.

I hope the Minister of State can tell me how the Department will proceed on this matter. Government policy is that all water and sewerage services must be paid for except by domestic users. Colleges and schools are in the dilemma of being placed in the non-domestic user category. Either they must pay or somebody else must pay. There should either be a special category for schools or they should be treated in the same way as domestic users.