Local authorities are planning to send letters to property owners who have not paid the household charge reminding them of the penalties and interest resulting from non-payment.
Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan also said the Cabinet would discuss the level of payment next week.
Over 900,000 households out of the estimated 1.6 million that are eligible have now registered to pay the €100 household charge, latest figures show, with €90 million collected to date.
Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan said today people were under an obligation to pay the charge, in the same way they were obliged to pay a TV licence.
"It will be brought to their attention that they must pay. It’s not going way and one way or the other they are better off to pay sooner rather than later," he said.
He said some people might have expected the levy to be abandoned but now realised that it would not be.
Last week Mr Hogan suggested he would “incentivise” local authorities that “pull out all the stops” to collect the charge by giving them a greater allocation of the money generated.
By noon today, 900,392 properties had been registered, according to the Local Government Management Agency, which is administering the charge. This figure includes some 183,500 postal registrations which have yet to be processed.
Some 73 per cent of those were registered online and 14,655 properties qualified for a waiver.
About 1,000 households per day have been registered for the charge since the May 31st deadline, after which penalties of €10 plus 1 per cent interest are applied.
One landlord has paid the household charge for 190 properties. Up to March 28th, some 41 landlords had paid the household charge and each had at least 50 houses.
The charge is intended to replace the exchequer element of the Local Government Fund, set up in 1999 as one of the funding sources from central government to local government.
In 2011 exchequer funding was €164 million; in 2012 this was to be replaced by the household charge to the tune of €161 million.
However, no matter what success rate is ultimately achieved, unless 100 per cent of the charge is collected, local authorities will face a gap in their funding.