Tracey O'Mahony
29 November 2023
6 October 2023
5 October 2023
OPINION PIECE EXTRA: I wasn’t planning on sending out a supplementary opinion piece today but I have just made a discovery that should concern all of us. I opened a letter this morning from the revenue commissioners in which I was given three weeks to confirm or deny that I had a vacant property and if I had there would be a special tax payable on it in addition to the regular property tax. A vacant property is defined as a property that is occupied for less than thirty days a year. It so happens that I don’t. There was a property ID supplied so I rang on the nearly invisible phone number supplied. Eventually I got through to a particularly helpful person who told me that the property ID on the letter corresponded to my actual address, the house that I live in. Apparently they spotted that my use of electricity was less than the average and therefor my house must be vacant! They calculated it on electricity usage and floor area in Sq metres and concluded that I am in residence for less than thirty days a year. It so happens that I don’t use a lot of electricity for no particular reason, I am quite happy to sit in a dark room and I don’t look at television. My cooking is minimal and I am privileged to live in a heritage property so there are a good few square metres of space. They got their maths wrong! But this is gross government overreach, this is preparing for the ultimate nationalisation of the housing stock. Firstly vacant homes or more precisely semi vacant homes will be hit with an uneconomic tax. Then holiday homes, then investment properties and eventually main homes. Don’t think that this is some far off theoretical event, a referendum to delimit property rights that government and fake opposition parties are supportive of combined with a hard left Sinn Fein marxist government that has a philosophical objection to the concept of private property and property could easily be nationalised in the ‘common good’. This must start with baby steps and the letter that I received this morning and I was told that many people received a similar letter this morning due to a noticed discrepancy between expected electricity usage and residency. We have been warned.
4 October 2023
4 October 2023
27 September 2023