Water scheme trustees ‘not willing to be tax collectors’

There have been warnings of a crisis in group water schemes because it is claimed trustees of such schemes will be unwilling “to act as tax collectors’’ when Irish Water introduces charges in 2014.

Up to 1,000 group schemes provide water supplies to rural communities, mainly in counties along the western seaboard, and there is confusion and uncertainty about the new charges.

It is expected there will be a block charge on each scheme, to be made up of the sum of charges collected from individual members of schemes by locally based, voluntary administrators