The volume of water leaks uncovered by Irish Water has been described as "crazy", by Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform Brendan Howlin.

Irish Water claims 46 million litres of water is leaking from homes every day, which is about 7 per cent of total leakage across the State. According to Irish Water around 49 per cent of all treated water leaks between the water processing plant and the tap.

Speaking on his way into Cabinet, Mr Howlin said the figures showed metering was working well.

“I think this is a good news story. It shows that the impact of the metering is working,” he said, adding that it meant 30,000 leaks have been detected so far.

He said the leaks uncovered to date were equivalent to the entire water supply for Limerick city flowing into the ground every day.

“Now that’s crazy. It’s wasteful. It’s environmentally unacceptable.

“So now we have identified where the leaks are the leaks are going to be fixed.”

The utility said the latest figures from house leakages came from the first reading of water meters at the end of 2014 and were “enough to fill 18 Olympic size swimming pools”.

Elizabeth Arnett, spokeswoman for Irish Water, said the numbers showed the northwest region has the highest number of household leakages.

“We can be precise [with customer properties] because of the water meters.

“The vast majority [of leakages] is no doubt on the supply side,” she said.

Households are entitled to have a free leak investigation to find the leak and a free repair of leaks located between the meter box and point of entry to the property.

Ms Arnett said landlords had a legal obligation to fix the leak on their property and tenants had a right to request a leak to be fixed as they were responsible for the water charges.

Ms Arnett said workers would start taking meter readings from April 1st for the first quarter of the year.

She told The Irish Times when all the water meters were installed, just 12 people would be employed from four companies to take the readings.