650 Million Mistake By Irish Government


Buncrana Together hits out at what it regards as an appalling waste of money.


There is no debate on the costs, who pays and the health and security aspects of millions of Smart meters.

The Irish Government has already spent €650 million on domestic meter's even though International Research has proven that identification of excessive use of water is not justified by the massive expenditure required by the installation of domestic meters.

They are also proposing to spend an additional 300 to 500 million Euros to complete the domestic metering programme plus an annual cost of €30 to 50 million to administer billing associated with these meters.

Scottish, Welsh and Northern Ireland Water Board's have invested their money in top of the range District metering to identify and repair leakage on the system while the Irish Govt allows 55% of treated water to go to loss. Listen to Scottish Water answer Fine Gael's Alan Farrell on the 'absolute efficiency' of district metering in this Oireachtas video clip.

The problem is this -- the Government, intent on privatisation and charging households, were never interested in impartial international research and findings. If they did they would never have gone down the road of domestic metering. However, having done so, the Government will not now admit their 650 million Euro mistake.

They would squander 1 billion euros plus rather than admit they got it wrong. They will agree to anything and everything in order to proceed with domestic metering.

Bottom Line - No Metering

1 comment:

  1. Going from zero to 100% metering is indeed costly. However, having a domestic meter is desirable when it can be achieved in a cost-effective way. The problem is that unlike Scotland, and practically everywhere else, there was no culture of paying a flat charge for water. You had the Labour Party when they were in opposition declaring how they would oppose charging without metering, which ignored how difficult and costly it is to achieve 100% metering.

    I was disappointed that Northern Ireland Water didn’t appear before the Committee. I would have been very interested to learn how much they are subsidised by the English taxpayer, like everything else in Northern Ireland. So, I am not sure how relevant their funding model would be for the Republic.

    Ensuring that domestic meters are installed on all new-builds, with the cost of installation borne by the developer, is the least that should be done and would alleviate the burden on the taxpayer.

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