The Cabinet will today consider measures, including extra Department of Education capitation grants for primary and post-primary schools, to end the schools' water bills controversy.
An immediate settlement of the issue is unlikely to emerge following today's meeting, which will hear a report on the issue from the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley.
However, there is an acceptance among some senior Ministers that extra money will have to be found to deal with outstanding and upcoming bills, in order to create room for a wider solution.
But a blanket exemption for schools is not possible under European Union legislation accepted by Ireland in 1999, and, even if it was, an exemption would not encourage schools to make any effort to conserve water supplies.
Besides extra capitation grants for primary schools, the Government will also put pressure on local authorities to cut their charges, but, also, require each school to put simple, but effective water-saving measures in place.
In the programme for government, Fianna Fáil and the Greens said they would offer each school a water allowance "with charges becoming effective after these agreed allowances are exceeded".
The Government is reluctant to simply write a cheque and cover the bills since this would create pressure for similar concessions from every community and voluntary organisation in the country.
Ireland was able to exclude home-owners from paying metered rates for water under the EU legislation, which is due to come into force in 2010, because it had not previously done so, but all other water-users do face bills.
Last night, there was frustration in some Government circles that the public believed that water rates for schools are a new development, since most schools have paid bills for decades.
In addition, the larger bills currently facing some schools - running up to €20,000 in some cases - are not just the cost of paying for supplies for the last year, but, rather, include bills that have been run up over several and left unpaid.
Former minister for the environment, Dick Roche, who is now serving as the Minister for Europe, yesterday put pressure on local authorities around the country to accept lower fees from schools.
The local authorities, he said, are getting "€9 billion from the State" this year and "should be able" to find enough savings elsewhere in their budgets to cover a significant element of the schools' bills, he told Newstalk 106 Lunchtime with Eamon Keane.
Senior officials from Environment and Education and Science will today appear before the Oireachtas Committee on Education and Science, which is chaired by Green Party TD, Paul Gogarty.
Former Labour leader, Ruairí Quinn and Labour MEP, Proinsias De Rossa rounded on the Government for laying the responsibility for the charges at the door of European Union legislation, since it does not come into force until 2010.
The Irish National Teachers' Organisation demanded "an immediate moratorium" that should stay in place until 2010: "Charging schools in advance (of 2010) is totally unacceptable and clearly nothing more than a revenue gathering exercise," said the INTO general secretary, John Carr.
Local authorities, if they have to charge schools, should be forced to do so at a national rate: "As schools are funded centrally at the same rate, local authorities must be forced to charge schools at the same rate.
"It is clearly unacceptable that some schools are being charged three times what others are being charged for the same water usage," he said, adding that a budget that would have helped schools to invest in water-saving was scrapped this month.
Labour's Ruairí Quinn and Fine Gael's Brian Hayes said the schools' water charges were "dishonest and excessive" and charges should not come into place until the end of 2009 and only after each school has been fitted with a meter.
Each school should get a "generous" per head water allowance and face charges only after that has been exceeded, while schools should get a one-off grant to cut usage, and reduce waste.
