Most local authorities did not pay any water charges on vacant social housing units in 2015, new figures show.
Irish Water’s charging regime requires the owners of dwellings which are not permanently occupied to pay a maximum annual fee of €125 for maintaining connection to water mains, and this also applies to vacant units owned by local authorities.
Statistics released earlier this year indicated that as many as 4,500 council-owned social housing units across Ireland were vacant at some point last year. However, figures released under Freedom of Information legislation show Irish Water collected non-permanently occupied charges on just 174 vacant council units last year amidst disagreements over payment methods.
The reduced levy is meant to be paid as per regular billing cycles, of which there were three completed last year, but the figures show just 10 out of 31 local authorities nationwide paid anything in 2015.
Single property
Whereas Galway County Council paid charges on 87 unoccupied units it owned last year, and Galway City Council made 41 payments, some of the country’s largest local authorities with the most vacant social housing units such as Dublin and
Cork
city councils had paid nothing as of December 31st, 2015. Of the others that did pay, some – such as Waterford City Council and
Kilkenny County Council
– only did so for a single property.
Irish Water said it is currently negotiating with councils and expects to receive backdated payments up to July of this year, when the Government suspended water charges, by the end of 2016.
It is believed that the disagreement centred around the payments process, with bigger councils which own a larger share of the State’s social housing stock seeking to pay charges in bulk rather than one property at a time.
Too burdensome
Some smaller councils accepted this method, while others began paying as per Irish Water’s requirements at the start of last year and then stopped when they realised it would be too burdensome.
The utility originally received lists of vacant units from local authorities prior to the charges being initiated and intended to work off these lists, but the process has had to be refined with councils unhappy that some derelict properties were being included along with units which had new tenants.
Figures released earlier this year showed that the average unoccupied dwelling in some counties such as Leitrim and Roscommon can be uninhabited for over a year.
"We need to work through the local authorities to understand at any point in time during the first year what the status of the property was and where the liability for the charges lay," said Eamon Gallen, head of customer operations with Irish Water. "Everything we do is dependant on declarations by our customers, whether it be the tenant or the local authority itself. We rely on them to give us information so that we can accurately bill them."