Caít Keane (Fine Gael)

It is not a home tax. It affects holiday houses. The Fianna Fáil Party's renewed programme for Government included a site valuation tax for non-agricultural land. I am delighted to learn it is addressing the exemptions. Perhaps they can go further than they currently stand. The issue of disabilities and disabled children, where people face hardships, could be reconsidered. They should be dealt with through an appeals system. Households that can afford to do so will be required to pay the €100 charge.

Section 6 relates to the provision of information in declarations by owners of residential property related to the household charge. In addition, provision is being made to allow the Minister to prescribe such information as he considers necessary to enable the preparation of a comprehensive database of residential properties in the State. Every other European state has such a database and it is time we moved in that direction. The collation of information in a national database would be of significant assistance in the context of the Government's consideration of the full property tax.

In addition, provision is made in section 12 for data sharing. The Minister for Social Protection discussed data sharing recently in the House. This is a first and I welcome it. We are talking about data sharing by people with local authorities and by local authorities with Ministers - and, as the Minister has outlined, all the relevant bodies such as the ESB and Bord Gáis. All of this data sharing is necessary and I welcome that provision in the Bill, because it is positive to keep channels open at local and national level, and indeed to prevent tax evasion and so on.

Section 10 will require the discharge of all household charges and late payment fees due to local authorities in respect of properties that are being sold or transferred. This is an important new provision which is being introduced to stop the practice whereby agents of property or property sellers are, in effect, passing on any liability for the charge on non-principal private residences to the subsequent owners through clauses contained in conveyancing agreements. The solicitors were taking it upon themselves to dictate who should pay the property tax. That was not right, and it is now being stopped. I welcome the provision.

The Minister of State has also informed us and the public of his decision to introduce this tax in the early part of the year and that there is a three-month period in which people can pay the charge. I welcome the public information campaign announced by the Minister of State, because it is important that people know what is coming down the line and that they have several months to pay the charge. A project board will be established by the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government and the County and City Managers Association, CCMA, on the introduction of the charge, as well as a bureau.

Because we now have all of these online services and payment options, I ask the Minister to consider introducing a facility for charges to be deducted at source. This would deal with late payments, non-payments and people putting things on the long finger. In addition, something should be written into the Bill to encourage people who are not online - who do not have the facility - to use free online facilities in libraries and local authorities, and similarly, these organisations should be encouraged to facilitate and help people to do things online. The communication that goes out should tell people they can drop into their local library or whatever and they will be helped to pay the charges online. As well as educating people in the use of computers for other services, it would be a service to the community to provide this facility free.

The Minister of State has gone through the list of waivers and exemptions to the charge. It is important to restate that people who live in social housing will not have to pay the charge nor will those who have to leave their properties due to long-term illnesses. I will not go into the list of exemptions given by the Minister, but it is important to point out that the vulnerable and the poorest in society are not being asked to pay. Those who are in receipt of mortgage interest supplement from the Department of Social Protection are not being asked to pay either, and that is important, because people are experiencing hardship with their mortgage payments and everything else, and we do not want to frighten them further by scaremongering and saying that the poor will be affected. There are people, as I said, who are in receipt of mortgage interest supplement from the Department of Social Protection, and they are not being asked to pay. I ask the Minister to reconsider the case of disabled people - to look at their household income, examine whether they are in the same position as people who are in receipt of mortgage interest relief, and perhaps introduce a similar exemption.

Those who are already paying commercial rates on a property will not be asked to pay the charge. We all said while in local government that those paying commercial rates were always being hit and that this was not good for society, for productivity or for business. Now the charge is being spread. All the business people in the country will welcome this charge, which will yield positive results. The Commission on Taxation, when reviewing the structure, efficiencies and appropriateness of the Irish taxation system in 2009, recommended the introduction of a value-based property tax. While the initial charge of €100 is probably not value-based, the Minister of State has stated that the Government is committed to introducing a value-based property tax to replace the household charge, and he has indicated that work on this is to commence early in the new year.

I remind anybody who might be tempted to say that it is unfair and that there is no such tax in country A, B or C that in Northern Ireland the rates system was reformed to become a local tax based on the capital value of dwellings, which meant that all properties were required to be revalued for tax purposes, and there are limited reliefs for pensioners and those on low incomes.

The charge will be administered by local authorities. The effective system of local government is bringing power back to local authorities. We have had too many centralised decision makers. Local authorities will have discretion over how this money will be used.