This article is from page 14 of the 2012-05-22 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 14 JPG
JUST under € 1.8 million has been collected so far in Clare via the household charge, new figures from Clare County Council show.
The information was given in response to a notice of motiwon from Labour councillor Pascal Fitzgerald requesting a breakdown on the total amount collected in the county to date.
In his reply Niall Barrett, Head of Finance, stated that the latest information from the Household Charge Bureau that there were 17,819 household registrations processed for payment as at 9am on Tuesday, April 24. This corresponds to the sum collected for the county to date.
He continued, “Nationally there are an estimated 220,500 household charge declarations which have been made through the post and over the counter in local authority offices that are being processed by the Household Charge Bureau.
“The County Clare portion of the unprocessed declarations is not included in the above figure as the county/city breakdown is not yet available in the figure.
“In addition, 15,159 declarations nationally have been received by the household charge bureau where a waiver from payment of the house- hold charge is claimed and these declarations are not included in the figure.”
He added, “This gives a total number of 921,101 household charge declarations made nationally.
“The amount collected for Clare will increase as applications on hand are processed by the Bureau.”
Cllr Fitzgerald asked if householders living in unfinished housing estates who have paid the household charge could be provided with services by Clare County Council?
He also asked the council to clarify their position for the residents in these estates.
Mr Barrett stated that there are no proposals at the present time to change established arrangements for the provision of services to estates in the county.
Cllr Cathal Crowe (FF) called for Minister for State Jan O’Sullivan, who he said represented 5,000 people in Clare, to attend a council meeting.
Director of Services Ger Dollard said the introduction of the household charge has not changed the way the council deal with unfinished estates.
He said the council is currently dealing with a number of unfinished estates in Clare.
“We are working very hard to get through that,” he added.