Prospect of cuts appalling, but opposition to household tax remains

Dramatic coverage has been given to the views of Paul McSweeney of the Local Government Management Agency, the body charged with organising the collection of the household tax.

The Irish Examiner (Aug 17) even notes as its headline that “Councils may have to turn off street lights”. Let’s face it, this is indeed an appalling prospect.

But how exactly does the crisis in local government funding relate to the household charge? Let me state clearly that I am a householder and a member of St Lukes Area Branch in Cork of the Campaign Against The Household and Water Tax.

I do not intend to pay the household tax as I believe it to be an unfair and unjust tax.

My view is that it has been foisted on Irish people to pay for the huge mess that was made of our economy — a mess for which not a single one of our leaders had been held to account.

One county official, Roscommon Town’s mayor Tom Crosby, has even stated that essential grants to the disabled for housing modifications, etc., could be cut due to the sudden funding shortfall.

You don’t have to be a maths genius to work out that all this doesn’t add up. The actual cut in funding made by central government to local government this year is in the region of €170m. However, the actual shortfall in household tax funds (arising from those who, like me, refuse to register) is more in the region of €60m.

There is, in other words, a significant discrepancy that has nothing to do with the household tax or its collection. Rather it has to do with the Government and its subservience to the Troika and its lynch pin, the IMF.

There is, however, a more important sum of money at issue and it is our ongoing payments to the bondholders. This autumn the Government, on our behalf, is pledged to hand over the next phase of payments to these speculative investors – arising for the bank debt guarantee. The sum involved, due on Oct 1, is €1bn. Bear in mind that is just the latest due payment and takes no account of what has already been shipped out of this country in payments to bondholders.

Our St Lukes Area Branch here in Cork are, one and all, making a stand that we believe to be principled and honest. There is a simple solution to all of this: don’t pay the bondholders.

Kevin Doyle

Sydney Hill

Cork