The Government has promised that people whose homes are repossessed will still be entitled to pay the new property tax.

The pledge came after attempts to evict a 63-year-old terminally ill woman and her daughter were temporarily abandoned in Dublin yesterday.

“We are an egalitarian society,” a Labour spokesman said.

“The repossessed, the dispossessed, the terminally ill and the dead have as much right to pay tax as the next man.”