Most households will not have paid charge by deadline

THE GOVERNMENT has predicted a late surge in registrations for the household tax but accepts that a majority of households may not have paid before the weekend deadline.

With just three days to go to the March 31st payment date, a little more than 400,000 out of an estimated 1.6 million households have registered for the flat €100 tax, a little over a quarter of all properties.

The Department of the Environment said last night there had been a substantial increase in registrations in recent days. In the 24 hours up to 5pm yesterday there were 27,732 registrations, the most recorded for a single day.

Also, the number of post bags containing cheques had increased from 19 to 27, or from about 10,000 to 20,000 registrations. By last night, 395,232 households had registered, netting almost €40 million of the €160 million projected overall revenue. Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan said he hoped that, with it getting “close to the wire”, households would now pay. But privately Government deputies yesterday expressed doubt that a late surge would make a real impact in bridging the 1.2 million registration shortfall, or stave off what one TD said was potentially the “biggest political embarrassment so far”.

The charge was the subject of an involved discussion at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting amid disquiet expressed by some Ministers on how the campaign had been handled. But both Mr Hogan and Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore confirmed after the meeting there had been no change in the deadline, nor in the fines and levies households would have to pay for not registering on time.

Initiatives following the meeting were the announcement of a nationwide advertising campaign and a request to local authorities to open up more offices to process payments. Mr Hogan said there had been a lot of “misinformation” about the charge, including a claim it would be deducted from paypackets.

Minister of State for European Affairs Lucinda Creighton said mistakes had been made in the way the charge had been handled, including problems with distributing leaflets to all households.

She said the only other option for the Government was to increase income taxes, an avenue it did not want to pursue.

Minister for Public Expenditure Brendan Howlin said people liked to get a bill “so that they know what is owed and how to pay it”.

Fianna Fáil, whose leader Micheál Martin described it as a “fiasco”, urged the Government to extend the deadline to the end of September.

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams described the Government approach as “aggressive”, while Joe Higgins of the United Left Alliance accused the Government of “threatening the ordinary, decent backbone of this country that you will drag them through the courts”.