Landlord pays €19,000 charge

A landlord has paid the household charge for 190 properties, it emerged today.

The landlord filled out his form and included a cheque for €19,000, according to the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA).

LGMA chief executive Paul McSweeney said 886,000 householders had registered for the household charges by the close of business yesterday. Some 636,000 registered online, 154,000 came through postal applications and 81,000 were handed into the local authority.

Mr McSweeney told RTÉ’s Today with Pat Kenny programme that “a single digit number of forms” opened on a daily basis were those with 50 homes or more.

“Obviously there are people out there with a significant amount of properties and are liable for the household charge and because they did not want to incur fines and penalties they paid the charge on time,” he said.

Mr McSweeney said it was clear that the 230,000 forms to be processed does not equate to 230,000 properties as many forms contained the household charge for multiple properties. “We expect the number of properties that have registered to grow in the days and weeks ahead,” he said.

Only 13,835 homeowners who registered qualify for a waiver.

In addition, some 8,800 property owners registered online after the deadline on Saturday night and incurred penalties of €10 plus €1 in interest.

Mr McSweeney said he was proud of how local government staff had coped with the household charge and said their handling of it had been “excellent”.