Barry Cowen (Laois-Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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502. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will provide in tabular form on a county basis the total number of water meters due to installed; the total number of water meters installed to date; the number of homes which will not have a meter installed by the end of the process; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [32737/14]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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The Water Services Act 2013 provides for the establishment of Irish Water as an independent subsidiary within the Bord Gáis Éireann Group and assigns the necessary powers to allow Irish Water to undertake the water metering programme. The meter installation programme commenced in August 2013 and will be completed by mid - 2016.

Irish Water has indicated that it will have installed a t least 400,000 meters by the end of 2014, with 1.058 million properties to be metered by mid - 2016. Of the estimated 1.35 million 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 has awarded contracts on a regional basis and over 290,000 installations were completed by the end of June 2014.

Irish Water has also 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, the 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 process.

Irish Water has established a dedicated team to deal with representations and queries from public representatives. They may be contacted via email to oireachtasmembers@water.ieor by telephone on 1890 278 278.