Gilmore comes under fire for public confusion over household tax payment

The scale of the mass boycott of the household tax left Government efforts to impose the levy branded “chaotic” as ministers ruled out extending the deadline date to register.

Tánaiste Eamon Gilmore, who came under opposition fire for adding to public confusion about how the €100 charge can be paid, insisted the Mar 31 cut-off point would remain in stone.

Despite intense Dáil anger over the “chaotic” way the flashpoint tax has been brought in, ministers refused to acknowledge the public backlash.

Labour TDs are furious, saying Fine Gael blocked moves to extend the registration deadline under cover of rolling out the payment to post office counters, with intense resentment focused on Environment Minister Phil Hogan.

Sinn Féin’s Pearse Doherty warned that the fact fewer than 20% of eligible households — 300,172 out of some 1.6m — had so far registered meant the courts would be swamped with hundreds of thousands of failure-to-pay cases and ministers were set to make one million citizens “law-breakers”.

Fianna Fáil leader Micheál Martin said the Coalition was divided as he condemned the “confusion” in Government over the charge after he said Social Protection Minister Joan Burton had called for a wider range of ways to pay to be brought in.

Mr Martin moved to pin the blame on what he called the “shambolic” introduction of the tax on Mr Hogan, saying people were being bullied by “Big Phil”.

Ms Burton said she was confident of a surge in registrations over the next 10 days due to the publicity the subject was now getting.