Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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82. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the current estimated number of households who will not have a water meter by the time charges are introduced; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25364/14]

Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)
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The Water Services Act 2013 provided for the establishment of Irish Water and assigned the company the necessary powers to allow it to undertake the water metering programme.

Of the estimated 1.35m domestic properties connected to public water supplies, approximately 300,000 properties will not be metered as part of the current phase, due to the cost or technical difficulty of doing so. These properties would include apartment blocks, other multi-occupancy buildings and houses with shared service connections.

Irish Water commissioned a study on possible approaches to metering properties that are not part of the current metering programme, including apartments and properties with shared service connections. This report was recently submitted to my Department and the recommendations of the report are being considered. In particular, my Department is exploring with Irish Water the potential to include a new phase of metering of some 48,000 apartments, which the report suggests can be easily metered as part of a separate procurement.

Irish Water has indicated that, including this new phase of apartment metering, it will have installed approximately 450,000 meters by the time billing commences from January 2015, with approximately 875,000 meters by the end of 2015, and 1.1 million properties will be metered by the end of 2016.