Dara Calleary (Mayo, Fianna Fail)
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531. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the process involved in activating the newly-installed individual water meters; the process that will be involved in reading these meters once they have been activated; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [37716/14]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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Since 1 January 2014 Irish Water has statutory responsibility for all aspects of water services planning, delivery and operation at national, regional and local levels.

The water meters being installed by Irish Water are mechanical and so they begin to record the flow of water through the meter from the date of installation. Every meter is fitted with Automatic Meter Reading (AMR) technology which maintains a record of the reading at midnight on the last day of each month. This provides Irish Water with an accurate month end / month start cumulative consumption on an on-going basis. A meter read at midnight on 30 September 2014 will be collected for each installed meter, and this is the “opening” read for that household.

The AMR technology allows the meters to be read by Irish Water by scheduled drive-by reading. During the period October to December 2014 Irish Water will read all meters installed to capture the September month end read. In January 2015 all these meters will be read again to capture the December end of month read. By capturing these two reads it will allow Irish Water to accurately calculate the consumption of a metered customer from 1 October to 31 December 2014.