Law must be applied to all citzens fairly
LIKE IT not, most of us are going to have to pay a €100 household charge from this year. We can complain all we like, protest if we want to, delay handing over our hardearned cash until the last minute and bluster all we want to as well, but the simple fact is, it will have to paid. What we need to face up to is the fact that the country is on its financial knees, tax receipts are way down and all the old faithful economic mainstays from the good old, bad old days have evaporated. In short we need a reality check. Times are tough, businesses are struggling to survive and no-one is having an easy time of it. The government is strapped for cash and to gauge just how bad things are even now there is idle gossip that the State might need another bailout to tide us over until the good times roll again, if they ever do. So it's clear a cash injection of some sort is necessary. Apart from income tax, the country needs to have a broad base of sort form of taxation. A property tax - a household charge if you like - is the easiest way to achieve this, however, there are caveats: It must be fairly applied and there should be exemptions only in exceptional circumstances. We have the ludicrous situation now where houses in unfinished estates are exempt from the charge. I'm not talking here about ghost estates with one or two homes occupied and the rest crumbling away, but thriving estates that are 90 per cent occupied. And then we have the thorny issue of council tenants - why shouldn't people in local authority housing be liable for the charge as well? The law must be fairly applied to all citizens in this county, be they property owners, council- or private tenants, but this is not the case. A household tax is nothing new in Ireland. In one form or another we are already paying for our services. In many countries, refuse collection services are covered by council tax bills, so add your bin charges to your household charge and if you live in a rural area, add in your septic tank inspection fees as well and then don't forget your water charges. This then is the reality of living in Ireland in 2012. We may not like what we see, but the time for wearing-rose coloured spectacles has long gone. We all need to play our part if the country is to survive the recession, but FAIRNESS is the keyword, with the coalition government dealing with issues in an even-handed way and without giving way to powerful lobbies from whatever side of the financial fence. Given its record so far and its perceived unwillingness to seriously tackle some of the major issues facing it, such as how to pay inflated public sector salaries and pensions, or to address the fact that it can't afford the current level of benefits, and it's hard to see this Labour-influenced coalition grasping the nettle. It seems instead to be a case of taking the easiest option rather than the fairest.
