Kieran O'Donnell (Limerick City, Fine Gael)
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I welcome Ms Tallon and her colleagues. We are encountering many cases of people who want to pay the household charge but are having difficulties coming up with the funding. What flexibility do the local authorities have to introduce an instalment payment system? Considering that the household charge is gone by 1 January and the property tax, as announced, will not be introduced until July, there is a window of opportunity of six months to show some flexibility in this regard. Will the Department give a direction to the local authorities to facilitate installed payments? How much did implementing the household charge cost the Department administratively? We are making repeated calls to local authorities to give some leeway in paying the charge.

On another issue, letters for payment certainly were issued in recent times to the deceased. An elderly man told me a letter was sent to his late wife, who had passed away three weeks previously. It was distressing and should not have happened. I rang the local authority straight away and the advice I got was that it had come from the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and was not a local authority issue. We are looking for value for money but it is not always about the policy. It is about how the policy is implemented. The household charge was cumbersome and difficult to pay. There are constituents coming to my office who cannot afford to pay the household charge immediately and want to pay it by instalments. I spending hours on the telephone taking up officials' time trying to hammer out an arrangement. I want a direction from Ms Tallon. As the household charge is gone from next year and the property tax does not kick in until the middle of next year, it affords the opportunity to give some leeway to those who have not paid to date.

I would like Ms Tallon to address the household charge where it concerns the issue of estates. Estates in receivership are not exempt from the household charge while estates that are not in receivership and where developers are still doing work, possibly resulting in such estates being in a far better condition, are exempt. What will be the Department's involvement in devising a register? Above all else, it must be consistent and fair.

Can Ms Tallon do something now, such as giving a direction to all local authorities to give leeway in terms of an instalment arrangement? How much has it cost to date? What is the case with a proper register of estates? Can Ms Tallon explain how the situation arose whereby the deceased were getting letters?