920,000 sign up for household charge

MORE THAN 920,000 householders have registered for the €100 household charge.

MORE THAN 920,000 householders have registered for the €100 household charge.

The Local Government Management Agency, which is administering the charge, said 921,568 properties had been registered by noon yesterday. The figure included some 206,000 postal registrations which were yet to be processed.

An estimated 1.6 million properties were eligible for the charge, which was expected to generate some €160 million to go towards local authority funding. The latest figures suggest €92 million has been collected to date.

Some 74 per cent of properties were registered online and 15,159 households qualified for a waiver.

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About 17,500 properties have registered online for the charge since the deadline passed on March 31st, with those paying late facing penalties of €10 plus 1 per cent interest. A total of 805,569 paid the charge by the deadline.

The Local Government Management Agency said it could take up to six weeks before a breakdown of how many households in each local authority paid the levy was available.

The charge is intended to replace the exchequer element of the Local Government Fund, set up in 1999.

In 2011 exchequer funding was €164 million; in 2012 this was to be replaced by the household charge to the tune of €160 million.

Steven Carroll

Steven Carroll

Steven Carroll is an Assistant News Editor with The Irish Times