Irish Water has admitted it is "not acceptable" to issue hundreds of thousands of bills to people who should not receive them.

However, the utility's spokeswoman says it is unrealistic to expect all 1.5 million customers to receive correct bills from the outset. The company has admitted some 1.7million bills will be sent out, including to people who are not customers. Irish Water has also admitted many will be overcharged and have asked customers to alert to any errors.

Irish Water spokeswoman Elizabeth Arnett says teething issues are inevitable. She told The Last Word on Today FM:

“Of course it’s not acceptable to us that there’s any errors on any bills and we want to work closely with customers to resolve those issues as quickly as we can.

“But I think it wouldn’t be realistic to say that this exercise is not without the enormous challenges that it is – that comes inherent with introducing a new bill of this type for the first time.”

The first bills are arriving in letterboxes today, and will be sent out over the next eight weeks.

Sinn Féin has today published their Water Services Repeal Bill. The Bill was ruled out of order by the Oireachtas Bills Office.