The Minister for the Environment has been asked to investigate whether some water meters are a risk to public safety.

TDs have been told that some meters may be covered with the wrong sort of plastic - and may be dangerous to anyone who walks or drives over them.

Irish Water and its contractors are around halfway through their plans to install over a million meters nationwide.

But now TDs have been alerted to complaints that some of those meters may pose a risk to public safety - because they’re surrounded in the wrong plastic.

It’s been claimed that some of the boundary boxes - basically the cases in which the meters are contained - are in breach of the government’s own rules.

If they ARE using the wrong grade of plastic, the surface is too slippery - and in this weather, pose a major health hazard to anyone who walks or drives over the lid.

The claims have been made by a company in Cork which makes a different model of ”boundary box".

But an Oireachtas committee says the complaint warrants further investigation - and they’ve asked environment minister Alan Kelly to guarantee that there’s no threat to public safety.