Over two-thirds of water bill will be for meter, says Barry Cowen

More than two-thirds of the water charges bill for a single adult will be for the water meter, Fianna Fáil environment spokesman Barry Cowen has claimed in the Dáil.

During heated exchanges with Tánaiste Joan Burton following revelations that water meters have a manufacturers' guarantee of just 15 years, Mr Cowen said the investment represented a cost of €416 per meter.

“The Government is spending €500 million installing 1.2 million meters,” he said and €42 million a year in interest. He claimed the meters would effectively have a life span of up to 10 years as they would not be used for years after installation.

“When people are told they will pay €60 for water they should know that €42 of the bill will be for the water meter. That represents 70 per cent of the bill for a single adult and some 26 per cent of the bill for a family of two or more,” said the Laois-Offaly TD.

Five years

He criticised the €500 million investment at a time when hospital emergency services were under pressure, “community care for the elderly is almost non-existent, home-help hours are being slashed and elderly and disabled people applying for housing adaptation grants are being told they must wait three to five years”.

Ms Burton said Mr Cowen had a "nerve" to come into the Dáil when the governor of the Central Bank was retelling the "sad story of how Fianna Fáil chose to spend €34 billion on two failed financial entities, Anglo Irish Bank and Nationwide".

She said if Mr Cowen “is going to throw figures around let’s look at the big figures”, repeating that in government Fianna Fáil spent €34 billion on the failed banks.

When Fianna Fáil “managed to lose the banks however, it also seemed to lose its taste for the investment this country badly needs”.

The Labour Party leader said the expected life span of the meters was a minimum of 15 years and based on the experience in other countries "it is likely to be significantly longer than that".

Ms Burton said “the only thing that will have to be changed is the actual meter”. She added that “the experts indicate that it will in due course take around five minutes to replace a meter and that it will cost some €50 million to do so for all meters”.

Renewal

She said the cost of fixing meters when they came up for renewal would be roughly €5 million a year and roughly €50 per meter. Mr Cowen’s claim was a “ball of smoke”.

However, the Fianna Fáil environment spokesman claimed the Tánaiste “sat idly by at Cabinet and allowed the wastage of costs associated with this ridiculous project”, and that was not a ball of smoke.

Mr Cowen said they had never seen the contracts for the installation of meters or the detail of the awarding of the contracts. “The management of Irish Water continues to be a secret affair between the Government and the company.”

Ms Burton said Mr Cowen’s concern “ought to be with clean water for the public, and sufficient water to provide for the country’s industrial, economic, tourism and agricultural needs”.

She reminded him that the greater Dublin area “is living on the edge as regards water supplies” .