Fianna Fáil has indicated that those who use excessive amounts of water should have to pay for it.
An expert commission has recommended that we pay for our water infrastructure through general taxation - but there should be charges for wasteful use.
A special Oireachtas committee will now decide if people who didn't pay previous water charges will be prosecuted.
Fianna Fáil's spokesman on Housing, Planning and Local Government Barry Cowen, said: "So you have to ask yourself, and the committee must ask itself: what's normal use, what's excessive use, should we continue with individual metering or should there be district metering, which is a recommendation again of the committee, what methods of conservation should be explored other than the view of the previous Government that the only form of conservation in town as far as they were concerned, was the enforcement of water charges',".