Leaks mean 1pc of water customers ‘use 25pc of total supply’

FEWER than 1pc of metered households use 25pc of all water supplied by Irish Water, which is being blamed largely on leaks in the system across the country.

According to new figures from the Central Statistics Office (CSO), the average consumption per metered home fell to 351 litres a day in 2016.

This is down by 8.4pc compared with the previous year, when 383 litres were consumed.

But a small number of homes were found to use up to 1,300 litres.

It found households in Dublin 24 use the most, with an average of 569 litres, while Dublin

20 had the lowest average at

274 litres.

Cavan had an average consumption in 2016 of 298 litres compared with Offaly, which had a daily average of 398 litres.

Others included: Donegal –

300 litres; Galway – 381 litres; Kerry – 355 litres; Longford – 388 litres; and Monaghan –

304 litres.

In contrast to average consumption, the median consumption per meter each day

(249 litres) in 2016 was 1.2pc higher than the 2015 figure of

246 litres.

Around 75pc of annual total water consumption by metered customers was accounted for by 99.1pc of customers, using a consumption threshold of 1,000 litres per meter a day.

This means that just 0.9pc of Irish Water customers used a quarter of all water in

2016.

Gerry Brady, from the CSO’s environmental and climate division, told the Irish Independent that this is down to leaks.

“There’s no way that less than 1pc of households can use that much water. This is an indication that it has to be down to leaks.

“Even though we can see that Irish Water has repaired a lot of burst mains, there seems to still be a lot of leaks yet to be fixed. This is having a big impact.”

A spokesperson for Irish Water claims the reduction in domestic usage can be attributed to it fixing leaks throughout its ‘First Fix Free’ programme.

“A constant flow of water, that is six litres per hour over a 48-hour period, will trigger a constant flow alarm on the meter, indicating a potential leak. The largest leaks wasting the most water were fixed first.

“In summary, the total number of continuous flow alarms recorded was 60,545 at Q1 2017 and 55,835 at the end of Q2 2017.

“Under the First Fix leak repair scheme, Irish Water is assisting customers by notifying them where suspected leakage is occurring within the boundary of their property.”

Irish Water estimates that repairing defective water pipes in the Dublin area (totalling

8,000km) would cost around

€5bn.

The water network can supply 623 million litres and the typical daily requirement is 540 million.

In the Dublin area the buffer is just 2pc.

The population of the wider Dublin and Eastern region is expected to grow by 500,000 in the next 20 years.