People Before Profit TD Joan Collins has said she hopes one million people will refuse to pay the household charge.
The €100 household charge, which is due to be paid by the end of next March, is likely to be replaced in little more than a year by a comprehensive property tax. Ms Collins said this would have a “devastating impact” on families which were “barely managing”.
Calling for a “campaign of boycott” at a press conference in Dublin, Ms Collins urged people not to register for the new charge in the New Year. “It’s the Government’s problem then; it’s not an individual’s problem,” she said.
Independent TD Mick Wallace said it was “disingenuous” to suggest that a small group of TDs were “leading people by the nose into trouble” by advocating that they do not pay the charge.
Mr Wallace said he was merely responding to people his constituency who were telling him they could not afford to pay.
Also present were People Before Profit TD Richard Boyd-Barrett, Socialist TDs Joe Higgins and Clare Daly and Socialist MEP Paul Murphy.
Mr Boyd-Barrett accused the Government of “trying to pull a con trick on people” by saying that just €2 a week would be asked of householders. He claimed people could face “up to €1,000 a year for just living in their house”.
He said people should refuse to register for the tax, saying the Government was “vulnerable to a movement of people power”.
Mr Boyd-Barrett also said that if a law was unjust then it was alright to break it, adding that historical figures such as Ghandi and Martin Luther King had done so.
