What is Irish Water?
Irish Water will be a new public utility company which will control, manage and charge for the supply of public water in Ireland.
The Government decided yesterday to set up the company on an interim basis.
It will be a publicly owned company which will be a subsidiary of Bord Gáis.
What will it do?
It will gradually take over the running of public water schemes from the country’s 34 local authorities.
Secondly, it will install meters in approximately one million homes by the end of 2014.
By that year, it will begin to send out water bills to those homes and a further 300,000 homes which will not have meters.
Those homes will receive bills on an “assessed” basis – paying similar amounts to similar households in their locality.
What about those homes in private group water schemes?
They will not face water charges as they are not connected to the public mains.
How much will it cost?
Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan said yesterday that the company would receive a loan of €450 million from the National Pension Reserve Fund to finance the provision of meters and other services.
Householders will not be asked to pay up front for the installation of the meters, but will pay approximately €39 to €40 per year in standing charges over a period of 20 years.
The body that will ultimately decide the pricing level will be the Commission for Energy Regulation. It will decide how much will be charged for water and what annual free allowance will be allocated to households.
Domestic water provision currently costs circa €1.2 billion per annum.
If that cost were to be fully transferred to households, the average would be over €900 per annum.
Politically, that level of cost would not be sustainable. In the briefing documents supplied yesterday the department confirmed that some of the funding would still come from central government.
Other than the €40 standing charge to fund installation, no decisions have been taken on pricing yet.
How long will installation take?
About two to three years.
The operation will begin in October and involve up to 200 contractors working on clusters of 5,000 to 6,000 households each.
Mr Hogan said that the process could create 2,000 jobs during that three years.
How will the meter operate?
A boundary box will be located outside the property (on the footpath or on a grass verge).
The boundary box will involve a propeller-type apparatus being installed within the water inflow pipe that will gauge the volume of water being used.
There will be a short-range transmitter that will transfer that information electronically to the meter.
A number of times each year, an Irish Water vehicle will drive by the household and collect the information electronically.
The meter itself will need to be replaced every seven years or so.
