TDs hope boycott will force €100 tax U-turn

TDS PROMOTING a national boycott of the €100 household charge yesterday said they hoped one million people would refuse to pay and force the Government into a climbdown.

People Before Profit TD Joan Collins said the charge, due to be paid by the end of next March and likely to be replaced in little more than a year by a property tax, would have a “devastating impact” on families who were “barely managing” at present.

“We are encouraging a campaign of boycott so . . . a week before the March 31st registration date, there will be a million people not paying it. Then it becomes unenforceable, uncollectible and people are protected,” Ms Collins said.

“Then it becomes a political problem. It’s the Government’s problem then; it’s not an individual problem.”

She was speaking at a press conference in Dublin city centre organised by the Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes (CAHWT).

Independent TD Mick Wallace said it was “disingenuous” to suggest that a small group of TDs were “leading people by the nose into trouble” by advocating that they should not pay the charge and therefore face financial penalties.

Mr Wallace said he was merely responding to people in his constituency who were telling him they simply could not afford to pay.

Also present were People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd Barrett, Socialist TDs Joe Higgins and Clare Daly, and Socialist MEP Paul Murphy. Mr Boyd Barrett accused the Government of “trying to pull a con trick on people” by saying that just €2 a week would be asked of householders. He claimed people could face bills of “up to €1,000 a year for just living in their house”.

He said people should refuse to register for the tax, saying the Government was “vulnerable to a movement of people power”.

Mr Boyd Barrett also said that if a law could be proved to be unjust then breaking it was “entirely justified”, adding that historical figures such as Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King had done so.

Mr Murphy described the household charge as “the thin end of the wedge”. He said working-class people already faced very significant taxes.