House tax handling was far from ideal, says Shortall

Mistakes were made in the rollout of the household tax, ministers admitted as the scale of the mass boycott continued to embarrass the Government.

Róisín Shortall, minister of state at the Department of Health, denied the charge had been a disaster but conceded it was “far from ideal as a system and far from ideal how it was handled”.

With the Government unable to say with for certain how many homes were eligible for the levy, political debate continued to rage over whether even half of those due to pay the charge had registered.