Tommy Broughan (Dublin North East, Independent)
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646. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the cost to date to the Exchequer for the establishment and operation of Irish Water and metering. [12977/15]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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No Exchequer funds have been provided for the establishment costs of Irish Water. The only Exchequer funding provided to Bórd Gáis or Irish Water in 2012 or 2013 in relation to the metering costs of Irish Water was a grant of €0.57m to Irish Water in 2013 to fund the cost of a pilot study in relation to Phase 2 of the Water Metering Programme which is targeted at metering those properties that were not meterable in the Phase 1 Programme. In 2014, Irish Water, which now has statutory responsibility for water services, received €239m for capital purposes – this was provided by way of €185m capital contribution from the Minister for Finance and a further €54m in the form of a convertible loan. This is broadly equivalent to the €240m in Exchequer resources devoted to the Water Services Investment Programme in 2013. A further capital contribution of €222m in respect of 2015 has also been provided to Irish Water by the Minister for Finance.

Irish Water received a subvention of some €439 million from the Local Government Fund in 2014 for operational expenditure, to fund water-related expenditures incurred heretofore by local authorities and which would, historically, have been met by local authorities from their own resources, non-domestic water charge revenues and general purpose grants from the Fund.

In relation to the broader water sector reform programme, my Department has provided funding of some €21m during the period 2012 to date. The majority of this expenditure related to funding provided to local authorities to meet the costs of the pre-installation survey required as part of the domestic metering programme and the staffing costs of the Water Services Transition Office, which was put in place to ensure appropriate arrangements for engagement with the local authority sector during the reform process.