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IRISH WATER SAYS it has now installed 755,000 meters across the country as part of its metering programme.
The utility’s head of asset management, Jerry Grant, told TDs and Senators that this involved the installation of 645,000 water meter boundary boxes over the last few years.
The other 110,000 meters were installed in existing boundary boxes. Grant explained that almost all of the meters were installed in “deep down areas” of footpaths outside houses and buildings.
He said that of the hundreds of thousands of boundary boxes installed so far, just 14 had failed with most failures relating to worksmaship and the strength of the cover.
However, independent TD Micheal Healy-Rae claimed the actual number of broken boxes was at least 15. He said that the grade C boxes that Irish Water had been installing were inferior to grade B boxes, bringing examples of both with him.
Grant told the committee that the lids of the boundary boxes could withstand more than two tonnes in weight from a vehicle driving over them.
He said that Irish Water uses automatic meter reading so that a passing company vehicle can read a meter automatically without the meter box needing to be accessed.
Irish Water previously said it intends to install more than one million water meters between 2013 and 2016.
This is despite water charges being capped at a maximum €160 until the beginning of 2019.
Environment Minister Alan Kelly has claimed that households could ‘beat the cap’ and pay less than the maximum charge by lowering their usage.
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Thank god we have eircodes
Amazon won’t be delivering with these in Ireland. They won’t even open an Irish store.
They are hiring people right now for a delivery operation in Blanchardstown
Who are they hiring? Drone operators?
And you think they will last long in America from being blasted out of the sky by the gun touting public.Be a great way for the kids to test their new machine guns.
Use parcel motel to get anything from UK that doesn’t deliver to Ireland like amazon. Great service
Is there an American version? Cheers
Family Guy, have they sorted out the customs charges and vat issues on that yet. Was looking into using MyUSA or a similar service but am worried about Revenue charging a bomb to have the package released. I believe if you keep the order to under 150 it’s ok….
@Rasputin: Are you actually asking if a commercial delivery-service provider have negotiated downwards Revenue’s tax ‘bomb’ on imports? No, of course they haven’t. Duty, usually at a rate of <4%, +23% VAT are payable on the combined cost of imported goods & shipping. So, if you want to grey import you need to ensure the foreign cost of goods plus the above charges are substantially below local cost to warrant the obvious limitation in terms of warrantee and backup.
Link? Are you sure?
Amazon don’t have stores…
More like slaves xD
Haha try dat
Baseball bat?
‘it’s illegal to have sex with them!’ Got it!
Call me old fashioned (many people do :) ) but I don’t fancy looking up at a skyline littered with bloody drones.
The future has arrived. Brilliant idea, hopefully the concept will actually work in the real world
I have no doubt that these will hit birds while they fly around or land. Can see dogs and cats attacking them too. Nice idea but there are going to be issues it is just a matter of how severe. If severe enough they will get banned.
I have nine cats and nine of them can fly, even when there’s a bird to catch as an incentive. Can’t see why a flying drone would be any different.
*none of them
I have two dogs and they have killed 8 birds in 4 months and they can’t fly either. Don’t know why it is a hard concept to grasp that drones have to land as delivery is the point.
Neighbour cat attacked my remote control helicopter when I was a kid. So all very possible.
“Sense-and-avoid” is fine but when it looses power gravity will kick in and I would not want to be underneath one.
I am sure though that much smarter minds than mine are working on it though.
Sense and avoid technology, is basically the drone senses something and avoids it, thanks for explaining it, because I hadn’t a clue what it meant.
These will never take off.
So in the future we will all live within 7.5 miles of an Amazon depot. The drones only have a range of 15 miles after all. And if this is the case wouldn’t a moped do just as well.
Limits on where they can fly, how far they can be from the operator etc, sorry Amazon but you are backing a loser on this one.
Sounds great but in reality, won’t be cost effective, too many possible dangers, I’m sure there will be some who would love to swipe them and launching in the land of “we’ll sue our mother for a Big Mac” – can only imagine what happens when one of these come within 20 get of a real person…
I’d bet my left nut we’ll never see amazon using these for deliveries. There’s far too many things that can go wrong
They keep droning on about this new technology but will their products fly off the shelves as anticipated?
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