Colm Burke (Fine Gael)

I raise the issue of the household charge. A letter in today's Irish Examiner from the Irish Property Owners Association states that its members are not in favour of paying water charges. These are the people who are required to pay €200 per annum because they have a second house or more houses. It was interesting to read, also in the Irish Examiner, that one person who owns more than 4,000 properties has paid a contribution of €80,000. Taking an annual rental income of €8,000 per property it means that person is turning over €32 million from those 4,000 properties. That is a very low average of €8,000 per property and-----