Water Meters Coming to Ireland

In famously damp Ireland, water is free. There are no water meters, and nobody has ever paid a water bill. As a result it is hard to tell how much water people use, but some recent studies have found that the Irish are the only people in the world who use as much municipal water per person as Americans. I find myself wondering how, since hardly anybody in Ireland has either a swimming pool or a gigantic, thirsty lawn. Their bathrooms are like bathrooms in England, not places you want to hang out in.

But however they do it, the Irish are going to have to start paying for it. As part of the new austerity regime, metered water is coming to Ireland, both to raise revenue and to encourage conservation. According to the government, the installation of one million water meters should be complete by 2014.