New figures show that Irish Water has spent more than €300,000 on external PR since January 2014.

The national utility paid €317,000 to four Dublin-based public relations firms to deal with bad press.

That figure does not include the spend on its own three-person, in-house PR team.

The figures were obtained by the Sunday Independent through a Freedom of Information request.

The company claims that the spend was justified due to the "entirely unprecedented" volume of media attention Irish Water received.