Rewards for councils who ‘pull out all the stops’

Rewards for local authorities to track down the 800,000 households who refused to pay the €100 levy will be finalised this week.

Just half of the estimated 1.6m homeowners made Saturday’s deadline, with ministers blaming local councils for the massive shortfall.

The Government stands to rake in an extra €9m with penalties from late payments as homeowners have to pay an extra €11 from this week on top of the €100 charge.

Advertisements will also go out warning people of the extra penalties.

Phil Hogan, the environment minister who set the charge, yesterday said: “In spite of the opposition to the charge, the majority of householders have paid the charge and I am appealing to local authorities to be businesslike in collecting the outstanding charges.

He said he was also “examining the principle of better rewarding those local authorities that pull out all the stops to collect the charge”.

More than 6,000 protesters gathered outside the Fine Gael ard fheis in Dublin at the weekend ahead of the levy deadline.

By midnight on Saturday, 808,000 properties were registered for the charge.

But the minister’s officials say thousands of postal payments are still to be sorted and some flexibility will be given to payments arriving over the coming days.

Mr Hogan said it could be weeks before the final collection figure is known.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny said during the ard fheis that local enterprise units in every county would be serviced by funds collected from the charge.

He said the Government would consider the outcome of the levy collection.

The Cabinet will discuss the charge tomorrow and how to rein in remaining amounts following a number of ministers publicly conceding that there were problems with it.

It has been signalled that funds will be allocated to local authorities according to how much was paid to their offices for the charge.

Lucinda Creighton, the european affairs minister, told one Sunday newspaper that local authorities were “poor performers” in collecting the levy.

Last night a Department of Environment spokesman confirmed an agreement with the Data Protection Commissioner would be finalised today to cross check information with utility providers and Revenue to identify homeowners who had not paid the charge.

The protocols, which will also be published, will allow collectors access lists of homeowners and search for those who have not yet registered for the €100 tax.

But Paul McSweeney, chief executive of the local government management agency, said there was no definitive figure on the number of homes liable for the charge.

These included households with exemptions, including for property held in trust and charity, HSE, Government and local authority housing.

Dublin City Council will this evening debate an emergency motion calling for the repeal of the charge and the introduction of an emergency government budget for local councils, a motion which is being brought by Sinn Féin.

Meanwhile, Mr Hogan has confirmed he is in a dispute over service charges for the penthouse apartment he owns on the Algarve in Portugal.

His spokeswoman said he hoped to resolve the issue with the management company shortly, after reports that there were outstanding charges of €4,320 on the property.