Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy for raising this matter. To give him some background on it, the reason we are introducing this household charge is the requirement in the EU-IMF Programme of Financial Support for Ireland, which commits us to a property tax in 2012. It was not possible to do the more progressive fairer system on this occasion and therefore we had to bring in a modest charge initially in 2012 on a flat rate basis. It is the intention of the Government to agree shortly the terms of reference where we can draw up a more progressive and fairer system for the future.

There is a range of options available for persons to pay the household charge. As the Deputy mentioned, an on-line system is in place under the Local Government Management Agency to enable homeowners pay the household charge by credit or debit card or in four instalments by direct debit. In addition, homeowners can make payment by cheque, postal order, credit or debit card or in four instalments by direct debit by completing the mandate on the declaration form and posting it to Household Charge, PO Box 12168, Dublin 1.

A bureau is in place in the Local Government Management Agency to administer the charge on a shared service-agency basis for all local authorities. In addition, all county and city councils have been requested to have arrangements in place for persons to attend their principal offices to pay the household charge up to 31 March, 2012.

I take on board the suggestions made by Deputy Donohoe and I am prepared to examine how we can deal with major urban areas such as Dublin, to which he referred, and other cities such as Cork, Limerick, Galway and Waterford to allow us utilise area offices because of the devolution of administrative functions in the various local authority areas. We will contact the relevant local authorities and if they are in a position to process these payments in offices other than the principal offices I will ask them to make those arrangements.

We ran into some data protection difficulties, as the Deputy would be aware, regarding the ESB and An Post. We were anxious to have some transactions directly with An Post but it required a transaction charge in respect of each transaction which was not acceptable and, therefore, An Post, which was anxious for the business, did not engage commercially with the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to ensure it would be in a position to do that business. Notwithstanding that, we are prepared to enter into discussions with utility companies and with the Data Protection Commissioner to ensure we overcome any issues that may cause a problem.

The deduction of the charge at source, whether by the Revenue Commissioners or any other source of collection by the Department of Social Protection or whatever, will be considered in the context of rolling out a fully fledged and progressive property tax in 2013, 2014 and beyond.

See this speech in context