The first Irish Water bills have arrived in homes across the State, with residents living in Donegal, Navan and Gorey among the first 37,000 targeted by the controversial utility.

Some recipients who contacted The Irish Times spoke of their surprise at getting a bill and were working under the assumption that if they had not registered they would not be billed - at least in the short-term.

That is not however the case. Irish Water is planning to send out about 1.7 million bills between now and early June to people who have registered, people who have not registered and people who have no need of its services.

The company has claimed the blanket approach to billing is the only way in which it can proceed, and while it has acknowledged incomplete records at its disposal will lead to errors, it predicts that within two billing cycles - or by the autumn, most of the errors will be stripped out of the process.

Errors already

It appears errors have already crept into the system. As many as 11,000 customers of the utility who submitted payment details in writing or over the phone have been told they need to resubmit the information due to concerns over data protection.

Some 9,000 would-be customers supplied details of direct debit mandates over the phone and these have now been invalidated, and those customers will need to resubmit the data in writing.

A further 2,000 customers who did actually submit payment details in writing will have to do so again because of mistakes by Irish Water staff when moving the customer details online.