Darragh O'Brien (Fianna Fail)

My point is that far fewer than 30% of citizens have paid and by the end of this week, the Government will be lucky to break 50% or 60%. The Minister was able to row back substantially on the septic tank charge registration while under pressure. He has proved that he can look outside Leinster House and then decide to row back on decisions he has made. This is totally unfair. The majority of households have not even received any information on this charge. As for the Minister to state repeatedly in radio broadcasts that one can pay online, tens of thousands of people do not have Internet access or are not versed in paying bills over the web. What will be the position?

I will conclude by noting a most serious development of which I learned this morning. The Garda has warned people in County Laois about bogus operators calling into estates to seek the €100 charge. This is because the Minister himself stated that if people do not pay, council staff will call around to households to look for the €100 charge and scam artists have already jumped on the back of that threat. Incidentally, the Minister announced-----