Micheál Martin (Cork South Central, Fianna Fail)
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1017. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government his views on concerns expressed (details supplied) regarding the reply by Irish Water to correspondence received; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [41414/14]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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Since 1 January 2014 Irish Water is responsible for the delivery of water services and is responsible for dealing with queries.

I understand from Irish Water that queries from the general public to Irish Water are received in the form of phone calls, post, email or other online media format (twitter etc.). Since the start of the year Irish Water has responded to 314,559 calls; the average answering time is 48 seconds and average length of calls is 7.2 minutes.

The target turnaround times for the other channels are 24 hours for email, 2 hours for tweets and 4 days for post. Irish Water’s actual turnaround for each channel at present is same day for tweets, 5 days for emails, and 4 days for post.  This performance reflects the volume of contacts currently being handled since the recent publication of the first Water Charges Plan, the commencement of charges liability on 1 October and the ongoing application campaign with substantial daily contacts arising in the context of customer responses to the issuing of some 2 million application packs.

Irish Water has established a dedicated team to deal with representations and queries from public representatives and is contacting all Oireachtas members to provide details of an improved level of service which it is aiming to provide. The team can be contacted via email to oireachtasmembers@water.ieor by telephone on a new dedicated number, 1890 578578.

As regards the specific instance quoted, Irish Water has confirmed that this issue was handled through their customer complaint process and a response issued directly to the individual concerned, addressing all the issues raised. If the person is unhappy with the response, Irish Water will be happy to continue to engage with the individual in question.