Irish Water has denied there has been a mass cancellation of payments in the wake of the general election.
The utility said on Saturday a “significant” number of customers have paid their bill for the first time in the last week.
There is uncertainty surrounding the future of Irish Water as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael differ on the issue water charges.
Changes to the structure of Irish Water and some minor adjustments to the charging system could be considered by Fine Gael as part of negotiations on forming a new government.
Fianna Fáil has committed to the abolition of Irish Water and the suspension of water charges for five years.
This proposal has been rejected by Fine Gael, which says existing charges are extremely low by international standards.
In January, Irish Water figures showed 61 per cent of their customer base or 928,000 people, had paid their bill in at least one of the three cycles up to that point.
A spokeswoman for Irish Water said denied there had been a cancellation of direct debits to the utility in recent weeks.
“There is certainly no indication of mass cancellation of direct debits by our customers in the past week and a significant number of customers also began paying for the first time during last week,” she said.
When asked for figures on how many people have paid so far, she said: “It takes a number of weeks at least to gather that kind of information and to have a reliable indication of any trend (up or down) in relation to payments. Accurate information can only be provided once the billing cycle is complete.”
“Irish Water is very happy to provide payment numbers in a transparent way as we have done at the end of each billing cycle so far,” she said.
“We will provide a further update in the same transparent way once we analyse complete data from this billing cycle and we will know then what the trend is.”