Household Charge nets €2.7m for council

CLARE County Council has received more than €2.7 million from the Household Charge since it was introduced back in March.

According to the Local Government Management Agency, more than 27,408 households in the county had paid as of June 13 and this had netted €2,752,220 for the council.

In total, 27,762 households registered for the charge in the county but 354 of those received waivers.

Nationally, the figures reveal that 924,884 properties registered for the Household Charge and €92.9 million has been raised to date. The LGMA also said householders, who have not yet paid will receive reminder letters.

The LGMA could not release figures on the total number of households in County Clare that have not registered for the charge but according to preliminary figures from the CSO, there were more than 55,826 houses in Clare in 2011.

Sinn Féin TDs introduced a Bill to the Dáil on Wednesday aiming to reverse the Household Charge and reimburse all those who have paid it.

“The Household Charge was introduced because the Fine Gael/Labour Government cut the funding to local authorities. The funding was taken from local government and redirected to bail out the banks. To raise €160 million needed for local authorities a charge of €100 was imposed on people’s homes,” said the party’s Clare spokesperson, Anne Hayes.

“Citizens pay for services provided by their local authority through taxes. People should not be paying for these services twice. Households already have to pay for services including waste collection, call-out charges for the fire brigade and, soon, water charges,” she added.

“Sinn Féin believes that the Household Charge is a double tax and should be resisted. It is grossly unfair as it penalises those on middle and low incomes. The millionaire will pay the same as pensioners and lone parents. The Government could have made other choices,” Ms Hayes stated.

Funding and savings, she argued, could have been made by introducing a new third rate of tax on income earned in excess of €100,000, by abolishing group relief availed of by companies to transfer losses to profitable companies and write down tax receipts, by abolishing legacy property reliefs and by capping all public servants wages at €100,000 per annum.

“Any one of the above would have more than covered the cost of local government services,” she commented.

“Sinn Féin launched the ‘Back the Bill’ campaign to encourage residents’ groups, trade unions and campaign groups to support the bill to reverse the household charge. We have received support from both Unite and Mandate trade unions and the Dublin Council of Trade Unions.”

“This bill gives us the first opportunity to force Government TDs into reversing this unjust and unworkable Household Charge,” Ms Hayes concluded.

Across the country, 884,602 properties were registered for the Household Charge on or before 31, March 2012. Since then, a further 40,282 properties have been registered and paid penalties and interest of between €11 and €13 in addition to the €100 charge. 17,219 properties have been registered for waivers. €92,917,309 has been raised to date and money continues to be paid in daily. Penalties and interest continue to accrue for those properties, which have yet to be registered.

The LGMA has begun the process of analysing data to identify householders, who have not yet registered and paid the Household Charge. A formal project group has been established to progress data sharing across the agencies listed in the legislation; Non-Principal Private Residence (NPPR), the Private Residential Tenancies Board (PRTB), Revenue Commissioners, Social protection and ESB Networks.

A local authority has legislative power to bring legal proceedings for an offence. However, before any proceedings are commenced, those who haven’t paid will be written to and given the opportunity to pay. Jackie Maguire, chair of the Household Charge Project Board “encourages those homeowners who have not yet registered their properties to do so as soon as possible before additional penalties and interest charges apply”.

“We are nearing completion of our first data set match and we anticipate that the results of this data set analyses will allow local authorities to send out their first batch of reminder letters next month to those homeowners initially identified in the data set as not having registered and paid. Over the coming months as further databases are compared, letters will issue to homeowners as they are identified, advising them of the outstanding charge on their property,” she said.