Poor Relief (Ireland) Act, 1862

Rating of unoccupied buildings.

12. [Recital.] The guardians shall, in making every rate for the relief of the destitute poor, specify on the face thereof the period for the service of which the rate is estimated to provide; and when any building liable to assessment under the provisions of the Acts for the relief of the destitute poor in Ireland is unoccupied at the time of making any such rate on the electoral division in which such building shall be situate, the board of guardians shall in every such case include such building in the said rate, describing it in the column appropriated to the name of the occupier or immediate lessor, as the case may be, as “empty”; and such building shall be deemed to be rated to the relief of the poor as fully and effectually as if it had been occupied at the time of the rate made, and the name of the occupier or immediate lessor inserted in the said rate: Provided always, that if such building shall continue to be unoccupied during the whole of the period for which the rate was estimated as aforesaid, the rate so made on the said building shall not be recoverable: Provided also, that if after the making of the said rate, and before the expiration of the period for which the rate was so estimated as aforesaid, any person or persons shall occupy such building for any portion of such period, the board of guardians shall be entitled to recover from the occupier or the immediate lessor, if he be liable to pay the same, a portion only of the said rate proportioned to the time during which the said building shall have been so occupied; and the same shall be recovered from the occupier or immediate lessor, as the case may be, in the same manner as if he had been originally rated for such building, or, in default of payment by such occupier, from the subsequent occupier of the premises.