Dublin City Council has announced plans to extend the Local Property Tax to the homeless of the city in what is viewed as a controversial and callous post-budget initiative.
Dublin City Council has narrowly passed a widening of the Local Property Tax band to include those who are officially designated as ‘homeless’.
The voting breakdown
The motion to widen the tax-band as proposed by Cllr Joe O’Sullivan (FG) was passed when Fine Gael — who holds a majority of the sixty-three council seats – voted in favour of their councillor’s motion.
Fianna Fail councillors in line with their party’s national policy of a supply and confidence agreement abstained and no members of the Labour Party were present in the Chamber for the vote.
Fine Gael’s simple reasoning
According to Councillor O’Sullivan, the reason was “quite simple really. Dublin City Council is spending a significant portion of its budget on cleaning up the mess left by these people who choose to reside in the shop doorways and on the streets of our city centre.
“Too much of the time of our street cleaning staff is spent on removing cardboard boxes and abandoned damp sleeping bags which are left by these people after sleeping rough for a night,” he told reporters.
O’Sullivan then added; “This custom of the homeless thinking they can just sleep in any shop doorway they choose is being encouraged by well-meaning but misguided left-wing charity organisations.”
‘Can’t be allowed to continue’
“It can’t be allowed to continue — especially in the city centre. It upsets tourists and ordinary Dublin people on their way to work. It’s just not on! Especially in the run-up to Christmas,” he emphatically added as an afterthought.
“It’s bad enough dealing with the ten-thousand-homeless in the city but more and more of these people are choosing to bring their children with them. It has got to stop. Fine Gael in government has promised to solve the housing crisis and this is a very good start.”
Fine Gael’s way of solving the housing crisis
The councillor continued; “Most law-abiding residents of our city pay property tax. I can not see why those who choose to abandon their homes and occupy prime city centre locations think they can get away without coughing up.
“The widening of this tax-band to include the ‘so-called’ homeless will hopefully encourage them to move outside the metropolitan area and thus become someone else’s problem.
“This, of course, will obviously reduce the homeless numbers in the city — which as you will remember was one of our election promises. And you can’t say we as a party ever broke an election promise.”
The particulars of the new tax
It is believed that the new tax will be based on a per capita and pro-rata basis on the amount of LPT each homeless person would have paid before being evicted from their homes by banks, vulture funds and rip-off landlords.
It is also believed that families with more than three children will be entitled to claim an increased tax allowance offset against future earnings, should they ever re-gain employment.
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