Documents released to Fianna Fáil show there was 'not a lot of planning' put into the implementation of the Water Conservation Grant.

Spokesperson on Environment Barry Cowen said what the correspondence reveals is how little thought or preparation went into the policy from Government.

He said: "At every juncture, the government has made a complete mess of the establishment of Irish Water and the implementation of water charges. It is clear that no work was done trying to understand the financial or other resource implications that this entirely new payments system for the Water Conservation Grant was going to have on the Department it was dumped on.

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"We still don't know how much this is going to cost, but we do know that it will further undermine the net income raised through water charges and it will further undermine the entire rationale for setting up the Irish Water quango.

"The Government has been making up its water strategy as it goes along – we see from this correspondence the impact this is having on the public service charged with trying to keep focussed on a constantly moving target.

"The Government needs to come clean on how much money the Department of Social Protection will need to cover what it details as 'consultancy costs, postal charges, advertising charges' in order to have the system for the Water Conservation Grant in place by the end of June and what implications this will have for the 2015 spending estimates."

(CD/JP)