A group campaigning against the household charge has said it believes that fewer than 50 per cent of people eligible for the €100 tax have paid up to date.
Reminder letters have started being sent to properties that have not registered for the charge over the last week and Ruth Coppinger, of the Campaign Against Household and Water Taxes, said she believed the development could galvanise those opposing the levy.
Individuals who fail to pay the charge could eventually face legal action, the Local Government Management Agency has warned. Those who have not paid so far are already facing penalties and interest.
“Our message is that we are in a really strong position to defeat this tax if we stick together,” said Ms Coppinger, a Socialist Party councillor for Dublin West. “They can not take a million people to court.”
She added: “In an Irish Times survey 63 per cent said they opposed the charge which means that a lot of people who have paid it did so under duress.”
Ms Coppinger was speaking during a demonstration against the charge outside Leinster House today.
She said a series of new posters urging people not be bullied by the local authority lettering campaign would soon be erected across the State and that a protest against the charge would be held in Dublin on July 18th.
She said that at the point when 940,000 properties were said to have been registered, some 330,000 of those who had paid up were the owners of multiple homes.
“We estimate that if you take individual owners of homes, 52 per cent haven't registered,” she said.
“This is the only issue that has rocked this Government in any serious way if you think about it and we're not going away.”
Earlier this week, the Department of the Environment said more than 975,000 households, or almost 60 per cent of all households, had registered for the household charge.
