Re: The new holiday home tax gives LA's the right to access utiliy bills Data Protect
The Data Protection Act says that restrictions on the disclosure of personal data do not apply if the disclosure is required for the purpose of preventing, detecting or investigating offences, apprehending or prosecuting offenders or assessing or collecting any tax, duty or other moneys owed or payable to the State, a local authority or a health board.
So, the local authorities can request the data from the ESB, as I understand it, and ESB would be obliged by law to provide it.
However, nobody with a holiday home would dream of disconnecting the supply over the winter as there is a €100 odd disconnection charge and another €100 to reconnect it. It's cheaper to pay the two-monthly standing charges on the electricity bills even if no electricity is being used.
So, we must assume that the local authorities will enquire if the usage is near to nil over the winter months. The problem here is that due to the frequency of estimated readings - especially if the meter is located inside and the house is locked up - it would be impossible in many (most?) cases to state with any certainty that no electricity was used.
It would not be unusual for a holiday home to have its usage estimated from September to May, for example. It could be estimated at nil and the actual situation could be that the owner uses it at weekends. Or, it could be estimated at a few hundred units per period and nothing is actually being used.
That is not going to help the local authority.
And you can bet the ESB is not going to be happy getting requests to provide usage information to such bodies.
Regards,
Fnergg