Taoiseach Enda Kenny said today he is confident Irish people will meet their obligations and pay the household charge.
“The law is there, I expect that people will obey that law,” said Mr Kenny, speaking on the final day of his trade mission to China.
“Clearly, individual comments are made by people from time to time. I expect people, as they always do in Ireland, to measure up here and come out in big numbers over the next few days and pay their charge.”
Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan has again ruled out any extension to the deadline for payment of the €100 household charge and has urged householders to pay it. The deadline for householders to register for the charge is Saturday.
Mr Hogan said this evening some 486,000 households had signed up to pay the charge and he urged people to consider a "moment of solidarity" with the country at a time when our international sentiment was improving. Official figures from the Department of the Environment show 426,599 households were registered as at 4pm. There are also about 55,000 postal applications awaiting processing which are not included in that figure.
Total revenue generated from the householders who have paid to date is €42.7 million.
The issue was also discussed at the Fine Gael parliamentary party tonight. The discussion was muted with TDs and Senators expressing support for Mr Hogan and his stance on the issue.
Speaking on RTÉ’s Today with Pat Kenny programme, Mr Hogan said he understood people were going through difficult times and that they had taken cuts in salaries and lost their jobs. “Nobody likes to be paying any additional tax,” he said.
But the country was in a bailout programme, he said, and Government Ministers knew how difficult it was to implement that.
TDs encouraging people to break the law by not paying the charge would have to take responsibility for that in the future.
Mr Hogan acknowledged the first information leaflet on the household charge, produced in early February, had not reached every household.
But he said a leaflet had been sent out through An Post last week and there was also information on radio and television.
With regard to calls for An Post to accept the payment at local post offices, Mr Hogan said it was not possible to do this because he was subject to EU procurement rules in such situations and would be “sued” by the company’s competitors.
Mr Hogan said it was a “disastrous” situation that there was no database of property owners in the State “after all the Celtic Tiger years”. This had created a problem for him in implementing the household charge.
There would be data sharing with bodies such as the ESB in order to find households that had not paid, Mr Hogan said. He also said defended “teething problems” in the payment system because it involved people working in local government to do 12 months’ work in four-and-a-half months.
He could not provide further details on the ultimate form a property tax would take as this was a matter for the Minister for Finance. He confirmed, however, that in the future every property would be treated as an individual property and there would be no ‘second home tax’ as exists at present.
“There won’t be any difference between your principal private residence and a second or third home,” Mr Hogan said.
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.
Socialist TD Joe Higgins said the Government was “out of touch” on the household charge issue if it does not realise that it is facing a “mass revolt”.
The Coalition was being confronted by a “massive boycott” and an “unprecedented movement from Donegal to Wexford, from Kerry up to Dundalk”, Mr Higgins said.
Mr Higgins was speaking at a United Left Alliance event in Dublin this morning. He said people believed the household charge was “simply a precursor to a total new tier of taxation”. He claimed people believed the €100 charge would rise quickly to €1,000 or more per household.
“They see it as a further instalment of the disastrous austerity by which bankers and bondholders are bailed out at huge cost to their living standards and to services and to society,” he said.
Socialist TD Clare Daly said the opposition to the charge was "the biggest organised campaign of civil disobedience since the Land League".
People Before Profit TD Joan Collins predicted a large turnout at a protest organised for outside the Convention Centre in Dublin on Saturday to coincide with the Fine Gael national conference.
A group representing older people said it had received a "significant number" of contacts from around the country, from people confused about how to pay the charge and who were concerned that people posing as council officials may call to their homes seeking the fee.
Active Retirement Ireland said there had been a number of incidents in recent months where the Government had issued "confusing or even contradictory information on issues that affect older people and, indeed, the general public”.
Chief executive Maureen Kavanagh said there was a need for clarity around exactly how the household charge would be collected.