Tánaiste Joan Burton has sharply criticised TDs who say they will not pay water charges.

“Our salaries and conditions are pretty good and, yet, there are a lot of people here who are saying they won’t pay,” said Ms Burton.

“They are not suggesting they can’t pay, but they are saying that somebody on a very handsome salary should get the compliant pensioner to pay.”

Her remarks, aimed at Sinn Féin TDs and other members of the Opposition refusing to pay, were made during heated Dáil exchanges on Thursday with Sinn Féin deputy leader Mary Lou McDonald.

Ms Burton said the Law Reform Commission report on the issue clearly set out "mechanisms and methods'' whereby people who were unable to pay would be assisted in dealing with debt issues.

‘Well-established mechanisms’

She said the Department of Social Protection had "well-established mechanisms" to deal with such issues.

The Tánaiste had been challenged on Wednesday’s Cabinet decision to introduce legislation allowing for attachment orders to the welfare and wages of customers in debt with their utility bills.

Ms McDonald said she had asked the Tánaiste, over several months, to explain how families bearing the brunt of the Government’s austerity policies were meant to pay the “unjust and unfair’’ water tax.

She told Ms Burton the Government’s decision to allow attachment orders was “low, sneaky and a cowardly proposition in the face of mass public opposition to your water tax’’.

Fianna Fáil TD Billy Kelleher asked where Labour's "basic decency'' had gone, given that an arm of the State would be a debt collection agency for a utility company with no ability-to-pay clause.