Irish Water has spent over half a million euro on a major advertising campaign, encouraging people to sign up to the widely-loathed utility.
Figures obtained by Today FM show that spending on the customer recruitment campaign forms over half of the utility's total advertising costs since its inception.
The campaign - which includes advertisements in radio, national and local newspapers, TV, online and even on TV on-demand players - has cost the company around €580,000.
That's over half of the total €1.1 million that Irish Water has spent on advertising since its inception in July 2013.
The spending on the campaign to encourage registrations came in the midst of a series of increasingly angry public demonstrations about the very existence of Irish Water, and about the government's handling of water charges.
The €580,000 bill for the campaign is particularly telling in light of Irish Water's other major advertising campaign - a €400,000 drive in its first few months of existence, trying to convince the public of the value of the water network.
Some of the money on the customer recruitment campaign turned out to be in waste, although that is due to circumstances outside Irish Water's direct control.
Advertising in newspapers accounted for €56,831 of the total spend on encouraging customers to sign up and register their details.
Although Irish Water could not provide exact figures when Today FM asked for it, it is estimated that around half of that money went towards advertising to explain exactly what charges each household might face.
That was under the original water charges regime, kicking in on October 1 - and which was scrapped by the government, amid mounting opposition to the Irish Water project, within 50 days.
