The Department of Social Protection used long-established principles in dealing with social welfare recipients with debts, Tánaiste Joan Burton told the Dáil.

She said the procedure remained "absolutely intact" in the deduction of money for a debt. "It has been subjected to very detailed discussion in this House at different times and actually deals with very small amounts," Mr Burton added.

The Tánaiste was responding to Opposition criticism of the decision to introduce legislation allowing for attachment orders to the welfare and wages of customers in debt with their utility bills.

She said the Government’s decision was essentially to distinguish between those who could not pay and those who would not pay. It would lay out a clear path for the recovery of civil debt, she added.

Ms Burton said the legislation would remove from people any threat of imprisonment regarding civil debt, which went back to the times of Charles Dickens.

“It is a very fundamental reform to take that threat away,” she added. “I have to say I am very pleased that various organisations have welcomed the legislation.”

Ms Burton sharply criticised TDs who have said they would 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,” she said.

“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 were made during heated exchanges 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.

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.

Sneaky and cowardly 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”.

Ms McDonald said it was all about Irish Water and the public resistance to an unfair imposition on struggling families.

“People see that this is the Government saying to the working poor – many of those struggling are at work, as I presume the Tánaiste knows – that it does not care about their living standards or their day-to-day struggles and, if they do not cough up, it is going to stick its hand in their pockets anyway,” she said.

Fianna Fáil TD Billy Kelleher asked where Labour's "basic decency" had gone to.

“There is huge pressure on families, yet we now have a situation in which people in extreme poverty will be dragged to the courts and attachment orders will be made to their social welfare payments or their basic wages,” he said.