THE GOVERNMENT has ruled out any last-minute softening of its stance on the household charge to allow homeowners more time to pay without being penalised.
The issue was discussed at yesterday’s Cabinet meeting, at which it was agreed there would be no change to the Government’s stance that the €100 charge must be paid on time. Since the deadline last weekend, penalties of 1 per cent a month apply.
As of last night, an estimated 876,000 properties had registered for the charge, according to figures provided by the Department of Environment. This includes 635,000 people who have paid the charge online, 82,000 applications to local authority offices, 14,000 applications for a waiver and 146,000 postal applications.
The Government has revised downwards the number of households liable to pay the charge on foot of new data from the 2011 census. It now claims 1,570,814 properties are affected, down from the 1,639,000 properties it believed were affected based on 2006 census information.
The effect of this change is to boost the proportion of paying households or those qualifying for a waiver up to 55 per cent.
However, the Campaign against Household and Tax Charges continued to insist yesterday that the number of households liable to register is more than 1.8 million, not the figure quoted by the Government.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams yesterday repeated his call for the Government to scrap the charge, describing it as “a disaster for this Government from start to finish”. He said the charge should be repealed and a third tax band of 48 per cent introduced on earnings over €100,000 in its place.
Yesterday’s Cabinet discussion took place in the absence of Minister for the Environment Phil Hogan, whose handling of the household charge issue has been the subject of criticism.
He was in Brussels with Minister for Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht Jimmy Deenihan to discuss Government plans to relax curbs on turfcutting in protected areas with the European Commission.
Mr Hogan’s decision to travel to Brussels rather than deal with the household charge issue at Cabinet was defended by a Government spokesman, who said it was “entirely appropriate” for the Minister to attend a meeting about an environmental issue that could result in heavy fines being imposed on the State.
Responsibility for the turfcutting issue transferred from his department to Mr Deenihan’s last year.
Despite the fact that only about half of all households have paid the charge, a spokesman said it was highly unlikely local authorities would suffer a cumulative shortfall of €80 million because homeowners had the rest of the year to pay up.
