Councillor says domestic water rates will have to be introduced

Councillor says domestic water rates will have to be paid


Anton McNulty

COUNCILLORS will have to forego votes and introduce domestic water charges in order to pay for capital projects and conserve water according to a county councillor.
Louisburgh based Fine Gael councillor, Austin Francis O’Malley said the decision to introduce domestic water rates would have to be a political one but it would be the fairest way of paying for treated water. His comments were made at last week’s Strategic Policy Committee meeting on Sewerage and Water Services where the metering of water was discussed.
“We have to be brave enough to stand up even if it means someone loses votes. Paying for water is the fairest way because it costs a lot of money to treat water,” he said.
Earlier, Director of Services, Paddy Mahon explained that the council had to borrow €6.5 million to pay for sewerage schemes and will have to increase non-domestic water rates by 11.5 per cent to pay back the loan. However, he said that this would not pay for future projects and indicated that metering for domestic water charges may be considered.
“We don’t know yet [when domestic charges will be introduced], we have not been given any information apart from it being mentioned in the renewed programme for government…… and may be a possible source of income. If people pay for water the trend is that they use less water and at the moment there is a significant wastage of water with 45 per cent of water unaccounted for. Half is lost from leaks and the other half is lost on the public side,” he explained.
Cllr Tom Connolly said he was personally in favour of paying for water but added that it would be difficult for people to afford to pay and businesses were ‘ready to fold’ and extra charges would send them ‘to the wall’. He added that people did not need treated water for all uses and called for rain water to be harvested on farms and schools.
Cllr O’Malley agreed saying that ‘an awful lot of water’ produced at the water scheme he is involved in is wasted down drains.
“We give an awful lot of treated water to cows and it is an awful pity that no project was put in place to harvest rain water when all the sheds and houses were being built,” he said.
Chairman, Cllr Eugene Lavin agreed to put the item of harvesting water for discussion at the next meeting but IFA representative, Brendan O’Malley warned that one thing that would dictate if harvesting could be achieved was the price of the product.