Séamus Healy (Tipperary South, Workers and Unemployed Action Group)

There is a narrow range of exemptions from this charge. The number of recipients of mortgage interest supplement will be significantly reduced next year because all community welfare officers are informing people they cannot get the assistance until they are 12 months in arrears and have spoken to their lenders.

Private tenants are also meant to be exempt from the charge. Anyone suggesting landlords will pay this charge and not pass it on to their tenants is not living in the real world. Former local authority tenants who purchased their houses from their local authority will pay this charge while their neighbours who may still be local authority tenants will not. During the height of the boom, people were told by every Government person and establishment agency that they needed to get on the first rung of the property ladder. Many of them now find themselves in negative equity with mortgages they cannot continue paying. They have not been exempted from the charge either.

The Minister of State claims the charge will only cost €2 a week. We all know the charge will rise to a much more significant figure, probably €1,000, in a short time. I recall when refuse charges were introduced in the then Clonmel Town Corporation, a Fianna Fáil councillor claimed the weekly charge would be the equivalent of the price of a box of matches. People ended up paying a minimum of €400 a year which, when broken down, works out much more than a box of matches every week. The same will happen to the household charge.

This is simply a tax, not a charge. It is not true to give the impression that it will be an additional fund for local authorities. At South Tipperary County Council's estimates meeting last Monday, there was no reference to an increase due to the funding from this charge. Far from it, there was a reduction in the council's fund of €757,000. The household charge is simply a tax, another way of extracting money from ordinary people while making vulnerable middle and low income households pay for a recession they had no hand, act or part in creating.

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