The Green Party leader John Gormley’s decision to abandon plans to impose a €200 holiday home tax on mobile home owners showed “a lack of bottle”, one of his party’s councillors has told the Irish Times newspaper.Clare County Council member Brian Meaney (left), one of the few Green county councillors to survive the June elections, said holiday homes “benefit from local services; roads, lights and everything else”.
The Darragh-based Councillor said: “They should make a contribution. Some of them cost as much as proper houses. The Minister should not have backed down in this way to an agenda set by Joe Duffy and Liveline. It showed a lack of bottle. He should have stood his ground and made it clear that people should pay for services that they get.”
Such holidaymakers, he said, had “no problem and no difficulty” with paying up to €1,500 a year to landowners to site their mobiles, and yet they objected to making a contribution to the local authority.
