Gerry Grant – head of asset management at Irish Water – has been quoted in the Irish Examiner commenting on Irish Water charges… he said …
“The actual cost of delivering water will vary from scheme to scheme. We will have a … single national tariff across the country [which] will reflect the overall cost. “The CER will be looking to see where they can drive efficiencies from the beginning, and we’ll put it under a lot of pressure by benchmarking against Northern Ireland and elsewhere to make sure we’re doing the business efficiently and effectively.”
Currently – residents in Northern Ireland don’t actually get bills for water – but their water charges are included in the local authority rates they pay.
The average charge for water in Northern Ireland in 2013 was £424 per household – or about €513 Euro.
We have been told by the government to expect average charges here in Ireland of €240 a year. The charges here will be reduced for at least 2 years because the government is funding Irish Water from the Property Tax funds until 2016.
If Irish Water are using Northern Irish Water as a benchmark – maybe that will give us an idea of what size the average bills will be after 2016 ?
See our estimate of what the 2015 water charges will be here