Household charge opposition still hoping for success

THE deadline for paying the €100 household charge is almost at hand and those involved in the campaign against it are still hopeful of success.
Chris Quinn has been heavily involved in the Mid-West campaign and feels it can be resisted. “If enough people stand together, they’ll make it unworkable as it has been so far. They will have to eat humble pie and say ‘that didn’t work’.”
He says they have had a variety of responses from the Clare public. “Genuinely, it’s mixed. We were at a few parades around the county on St Patrick’s Day and quite a few people said to me that they had paid it but now they regretted paying it, more often than not. Most people said they hadn’t paid it and they won’t pay it. Some people said we were a holy disgrace but, at the same time, still hadn’t paid it themselves. I think people are sitting back and waiting to see what happens in the next ten days. There is a lot of fear out there; the Government are coming out with this spin that they’re going to go after utility bills and social welfare and all that.”
Some of the Government’s rhetoric is actually making people less likely to sign up, he claimed.
“I reckon the campaign has never been stronger and there’s things coming out from Government that is galvanising people against it more than anything. There’s a rumour doing the rounds that people who bought houses during the boom might get exemptions for a number of years but that’s just a way of getting people to register.”
Also this week, Fine Gael TD Pat Breen said he is anxious to see easy-pay methods available for people.
He said introducing the charge is not something the Government particularly wanted to do, adding that there is a need to make it convenient to pay.
“Given the choice, our Government would have preferred not to introduce this charge and we have made the charge as low as we could at €2 per week in order to make it as affordable as possible.
“Despite this, there are a lot of genuine people out there who want to pay the charge and are currently finding it difficult to do so and these people need to be accommodated. I would urge the Environment Minister Phil Hogan in advance of the March 31 deadline to instruct the county managers in local authorities to facilitate these people by allowing them to pay in cash and in instalments, particularly given the current difficult economic times.
“The majority of people are willing to pay the charge and making it easier for people to pay this tax by making easy-pay methods available is important in helping people to do so before March 31.”
He said several people had contacted him that were having practical difficulties in making payments. “Not everybody is on the internet and they do not pay bills online. I have spoken to quite a number of others who do not have a bank account and who are willing to pay the charge in cash in instalments. I spoke to one man who told me that he went into his local authority office with €25 to pay his first instalment and they were unable to take his money. He told me that he is willing to pay the charge but he is unable to pay it altogether and does not have a bank account.
“Several others have pointed to the fact that while Household Charge Application Forms are now being made available in local post offices, the post office cannot process payments for this charge.”
This anomaly has also provoked the ire of the Irish Postmasters’ Union which this week expressed its astonishment that the public has not been able to pay the household charge through the network of more than 1,100 post offices throughout the country. The Union, which represents postmasters in Ireland, called on Environment Minister Phil Hogan to instruct his department to immediately make arrangements for the charge to be processed through the post office network.
“At this late stage, the minister’s plans for collecting the charge are in disarray and yet he is not allowing the public to pay through the most accessible means available to hundreds of thousands of people. We have a ludicrous situation where people are arriving at post offices with cash in hand expecting to be able to pay the charge, only to find that we are prevented from facilitating them. It just doesn’t make sense,” said Brian McGann, General Secretary of the IPU.
Meanwhile, Clare Fianna Fáil TD Timmy Dooley has called for an extension on the charge deadline in light of what he called “a number of legal loopholes that have emerged, the lack of a proper information campaign and the inequalities with payment procedures”.
“The Government has made a mess of this from the start. The Environment Minister Phil Hogan has been so distracted by rushing through his controversial legislation and scaring people into paying it by the end of March that he has completely abandoned all sense of fairness and procedure,” Deputy Dooley claimed.
“With just days to go until the charge must be paid, problems are still emerging with the legislation. The latest comes in the form of a reply to a Parliamentary Question from Fianna Fáil, confirming a blunder in the wording for exemptions applying to State-owned properties. The result is that Government Ministers can technically avoid paying the charge on their own homes. Last week, the High Court allowed a challenge to the household charge based on the fact that the legislation wasn’t published in Irish.
“This entire campaign has been based on paying the charge online, which has alienated many older people and others in Clare who do not have access to the internet or would have difficulty filling in a form online. Many people I have spoken to can’t understand why they are unable to pay the charge at their local post office along with their utility bills.  However, the Government has failed to involve An Post in the process. It chose not to use An Post to deliver information leaflets, even though this would have guaranteed close to 100% delivery. The result is that with little over a week until the deadline, there are many homes across Clare which have still not received an information leaflet. The deadline of the end of this month is no longer tenable,” Deputy Dooley said.
“It is time for Minister Hogan to put his hands up and admit this has not been executed in the right way. He must extend the deadline while legal problems are addressed. He must also put aside his campaign based on fear and instead employ a proper information campaign allowing people to pay in a variety of ways, including at their local post office. Fianna Fáil is also appealing to the Government to consider households’ ability to pay and introduce a number of exemptions for more vulnerable households,” he concluded.