Independent Senator, Feargal Quinn has said he intends to publish a Bill in the Seanad seeking the removal of powers from Irish Water to request citizens to provide their Personal Public Service Numbers.

Irish Water is to issue its first bills at the end of January as the Commission for Energy Regulation has extended the validation campaign until the end of November.

Speaking to RTÉ News Mr Quinn said: "It turns out that Irish Water didn't have the right to look for PPS numbers and they had to introduce an amendment into the social welfare bill last month, and they did it almost under subterfuge.

"We give PPS numbers of course under legislation to various bodies, but they are all state bodies."

The CER said it has accepted the proposal from Irish Water to extend the deadline beyond the end of this month.

The first bills were due to be sent out at the start of January.

The CER said: "This means Irish Water will issue first bills to households at the end of January 2015 and these bills will include household and children free allowances provided that people register with Irish Water by the end of November."

Paul McGowan of the CER told a Joint Oireachtas Committee on Wednesday that it would make a decision on the proposal at some point this week.

Irish Water Managing Director John Tierney said 747,000 householders had so far responded to the campaign.

He said additional staff had been put in place to deal with the high number of calls from customers.

Meanwhile, Minister for Health Leo Varadkar has said the most important thing about Irish Water is to get back to first principles.

He said that over the last number of years, Ireland had been borrowing money from the markets to pay for water and invest in much-needed water services.

This was no longer sustainable, he said.

Mr Varadkar said it made sense to meter water and charge for it, so that people pay for what they use.

Fine Gael TD Alan Farrell earlier said the Government needs to consider capping water charges to help people in financial difficulty.

Speaking on RTÉ's Morning Ireland, he said that there "are a great deal of families" on the average industrial wage he believes will be struggling.

"Lessening the impact of those water bills was one of the purposes of the Budget announced last week," he added.

"Unfortunately because of the issues in relation to communication with Irish Water, really all of that good news [in the Budget] has been swallowed up by the issues and the controversy to do with Irish Water."

Mr Farrell said the Budget has gone some way to help people in difficulty, but said there may be need to amend the pricing structure to cap the overall charge.

There needs to be a prompt response from Cabinet, he said, but he believed this would happen.

Fine Gael TD, Sean Kyne has said that a cap on water bills, at a fixed rate, would give certainty and reassure householders.

He said that there is a concern among families with a large number of adults living in a house.

In relation to call-out charges, Mr Kyne said that there should not be an obligation on householders to use Irish Water if the problem is within their own property.

Independent TD, Clare Daly has said that she believes the decision by the Energy Regulator will encourage people in their protests at water charges.

Speaking on RTÉ's News At One programme, she said that she will not be paying the water charge and that if the water pressure is reduced in her house that she'd get a plumber to fix it, adding "sometimes bad laws need to be broken."