Irish Water has paid over €5 million in legal fees to three Dublin law firms since it was set up last year - a weekly average of over €81,000 per week.

The total the utility has spent on lawyers amounts to one-third of the annual budget of the Office of the Attorney General, which serves as legal advisor to all Government departments.

Figures obtained by The Irish Times using a Freedom of Information request show that Irish Water has spent almost €4.9 million on legal costs related to its establishment in 2013, with another €335,000 spent on ongoing operational legal fees.

Of the total fee, €3.6m has been paid to A&L Goodbody law firm in the past 15 months. Payments in June to the firm totalled €680,000.

Irish Water paid a further €1.3m to McCann Fitzgerald law firm. This payment was spread from August 2013 to October of this year. The Irish Times found that Most of the payments were for legal advice and legislative compliance.

In January, in its written submission to the Oireachtas environment committee, Irish Water predicted that it would spend less than €4m on the procurement of legal services, including €2.9m with A&L Goodbody and €970,000 with McCann Fitzgerald.

A number of smaller payments were made to other firms.

The company told the committee that the legal firms it would deal with had gone through “a very stringent legal tendering process”.