This article is from page 12 of the 2009-10-13 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 12 JPG
CLARE County Council is using a Dublin debt collection agency to ob- tain development contributions from individuals – some of whom may al- ready have paid their debt to the lo- cal authority.
It emerged at yesterday’s meeting of Clare County Council that the lo- cal authority has employed a Dublin agency to collect contributions for a range of small scale development and one-off houses stretching back for more than a decade.
It has also emerged however that the local authority may not have any documentation to prove that the con- tributions have not been paid.
‘Tam surprised that the council has not heard about the uncertainty out there as to who has and who has not paid,’ said Cllr Patricia McCarthy COND}
“The big problem here is that we don’t know. We can’t prove that they haven’t paid, they can’t prove that they have paid. When we are not 100 per cent sure we should have taken a softer approach to this instead of
going down the heavy-handed route of going to a debt collection agency. It shows a terrible lacking in the sys- one
According to Clir Pat Keane (FF), some people have received bills from contributions due more than 10 years ago which are now dramatically more expensive then they previously had been.
“It is unfair to be going back over ten years to people looking for this money. These people are getting a bill that might have been £170 or £180 at the time and now they are
getting bills for €1,500. I know for sure that there are a lot of people out there who paid in cash at the time and do not have the receipt and may now be receiving letters from debt collectors.”
A spokeswoman from Clare Coun- ty Council said that any confusion over who owes the money will be handled quickly.
‘Tam not aware of any issue around the uncertainty with regards pay- ments. If there are issues around un- certainty of who has and has not paid I will deal with that as a matter of
urgency, she said.
“The provision in our budget this year for the collection of debt collec- tion is €1.5 million and the collect so far is €1.25 million. So it would appear that we are on target so far to meet these projections.
“We took a twin approach to debt collection, some were pursued through Houlihans [county council solicitors, Michael Houlihans] and some were pursued by an outside group, and that was just to maximise the collection of money. I must stress that this money is legally due to us.”