A water leakage rate worse than most developing countries: Catherine Murphy responds to Government’s plans for Irish Water

Press Release | 26th April 2012

Speaking today in a Dáil debate on the establishment of Irish Water and plans to introduce water metering, Deputy Catherine Murphy (Ind – Kildare North) highlighted stark figures on the condition of Ireland’s water infrastructure, saying that a huge 42% of supplied water goes unaccounted for and is leaking from the system.

When compared internationally, Ireland comes out significantly less favourably to many developing countries, where the average leakage rate is 35%, and is left trailing other developed countries who manage to lose only 15% of treated water.

Figures were supplied to Deputy Murphy from the All Ireland Research Observatory at NUI Maynooth.

“It’s not hard to see why people are opposed to being charged for the installation of meters for a system that wastes 42% of the product it’s supposed to deliver. That means that 42% of the charge will be for water nobody will use. I fully support the idea of conserving water, and charging people for wasting it – it’s clearly essential – but the way the Government is going about it is preposterous. It’s putting the cart before the horse. We simply must invest in repairing and upgrading our water infrastructure as a first step, which will create vital jobs in the construction industry in the process, and help provide a badly needed economic stimulus.”

Share This Post

Tweet

Posted by admin on April 26, 2012. Filed under Dáil Debates,Environment,homepage,In the Dáil,Job Creation & Unemployment,Kildare,Latest News,National Issues. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry