What is the future for water charges and metering?

After the shambles of electronic voting, will the water metering project become the State’s next white elephant?

Certainly the recommendations of the expert commission on water funding seem to suggest no future for the kind of water charges envisaged by then minister for the environment Phil Hogan in 2014.

The commission recommended that in the vast majority of cases “normal water usage” should be charged as a flat fee that will form part of general taxation. Put another way, there will be no separate water charges for most households.

By the time a halt was called on the scheme, an extensive nationwide metering scheme had been more than half-completed.

Over 873,000 households out of 1.4 million had meters installed by the time the current contract came to an end during the summer of this year. The cost by that stage was an estimated €580 million.

The commission, in its report, has said it was within its remit to make any call on whether the installation of meters should continue or not. There are still some 500,000 homes without meters. Even at a conservative estimate, it would cost at least a further €300 million to fit meters in all of them.

Billing purpose

The primary function of meters was to assess the volume of water being used for the purpose of billing customers of Irish Waters.

A valuable secondary function was it became an effective tool in identifying leaks. Where a house was showing vastly excessive levels of water use, that suggested a leak. Irish Water used a "First Fix Free' scheme for households that resulted in daily savings of 48.5 million litres of water through the State.

But is that secondary function (leak identification) of itself a strong enough reason to continue with a very expensive metering project?

There are also political sensitivities. The installation sites of water meters became a flashpoint for anti-water charges protests, with some nasty standoffs. If, as is likely, left-wing parties including Sinn Féin and the Anti-Austerity Alliance-People Before Profit group reject whatever solution is eventually reached, history might repeat itself on the streets.

However, the two-tier formula worked out by the expert commission could not be operated without meters.

Those with normal usage will get a free pass, or at least their normal usage will come out of general taxation. But what of those who are wasteful with water?

The details of what constitutes normal and “wasteful” will be left to others – notably the all-party committee of 20 parliamentarians chaired by Senator Pádraig Ó Céidigh. When it reports next March, it will be expected to have some working figures for normal consumption and wasteful consumption.

Wasteful usage

The commission does not have a role in this but did put forward a few possible suggestions as to how a figure could be arrived at. One was that the actual current usage of a small fraction of the population which is wasteful (it suggested perhaps 10 per cent of households) would provide the figure. Another was a figure that was 150 per cent of the average actual use.

In reality, the only way it can measure “wasteful” use is through water meters. It will be impossible to do it in a uniform manner if so many households are unmetered.

Part of the issue is that many of these are apartments. The commission has argued that it could be assumed that all of these fall within normal use, as they do not have individual gardens or open spaces.

Some system of district metering could be introduced to monitor apartment blocks. This will be a tricky political question if this approach is followed. Logically, the metering project should be completed to allow consistency. But there are obstacles.

For one, it is very expensive and may not constitute value-for-money. But it is politically incendiary and will lead to accusations that metered water charges are still on the agenda, but are being eased through the back door.