Ciarán Lynch (Cork South Central, Labour)
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To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if it will be possible for apartment owners to be metered separately for water charges when the owner is willing, the management company is agreeable and access is available; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [14165/13]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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The Programme for Government and the Memorandum of Understanding with the EU, the IMF and the ECB provide for the introduction of domestic water charges. The Government considers that charging based on usage is the fairest way to charge for water and it has decided that water meters should be installed in households connected to public water supplies. The Government has also decided that Irish Water, a new State-owned water company to be established as an independent subsidiary within the Bord Gáis Éireann Group, will be responsible for the metering programme.

There are, as reported in Census 2011, approximately 1.35 million domestic properties connected to public water supplies in Ireland and the objective is to install meters for the maximum number of these properties. I have previously indicated that a proportion of these properties, including apartment blocks, may not be metered in the initial metering programme due to either the high cost or the technical difficulty of doing so. However, I would expect that a large number of these properties will be metered over time as options relating to metering apartment blocks are evaluated.