The Taoiseach says it's not true to say that water meters were not required.

Yesterday it emerged that Bord Gáis questioned the need to proceed with Irish Water's metering programme as a means of billing customers for water use.

The scheme cost a total of €540 million.

But speaking to Midwest Radio, Enda Kenny says water meters have a purpose:

A statement from Irish water claimed: 

"Metering:

Water metering is proving to be hugely beneficial in financial terms, and will generate savings that may on their own pay for the entire metering programme.

We are currently doing an analysis to quantify precisely the financial benefits and this is not yet complete. However we currently estimate that metering will bring savings of between €300m and €800m. This will occur through the identification and repair of customer-side leaks, and the reduction of water consumption.

The level of leakage discovered as a result of metering has been much higher than expected. There are examples of very extreme levels of leaks from individual houses having detected.  For example just 22 houses leak enough water to supply the entire town of Gorey. There are thousands more houses which have significant leaks and if only half these are resolved, this should result in a 6% reduction in domestic consumption.

In relation to reduction in consumption, UK analysis indicate that a reduction in consumption of 10-15% occurs after the introduction of metering.  This does reduce over time.  Nevertheless we have estimated that domestic metering will reduce consumer demand by 6%.

Our analysis is ongoing and there may be some adjustments to these figures but as stated, our estimated saving is €300m-800m.  Given the tight capacity situations in several urban centres including Dublin, metering will also substantially reduce the risk of a failure to meet capacity requirements – something which would cost Dublin up to €100m for a single day."