Just over 133,000 homes have now registered for the household charge, according to the Department of Environment’s latest figures.
Some 133,365 homes had been registered for the €100 charge as of Monday evening. That has brought in around €13.3 million for the government but is well off its target of €160 million by March 31st.
Tomorrow is also the last day that people can registered to pay the charge by direct debit in four installments of €25 each.
To complicate matters, people have been reporting problems with registering for the charge on www.householdcharge.ie
A series of protests against the controversial charge have been held around the country but Chair of the Household Charge Project Board Jackie Maguire said that non-payment was an offence and that late payments would be subject to increasing fines.
She told The Irish Times that information circulating online that residential property owners could “opt out” of the charge where they had not “given consent” to the law was incorrect.
Property owners were bound by the laws passed by the Oireachtas and they could not avoid those laws by “withdrawing consent” to them, Ms Maguire said.
The Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes said the fact that only 133,365 properties had been registered confirmed that “mass non-registration” was “entirely possible”.
It called on householders to maintain a boycott of what it said was “an austerity tax to benefit the bondholders and super wealthy”.
