Rent a Room relief

Pawwed Rig

Hi Hopefully one of the brains on here will be able to advise me on this piece of legislation.
We were chatting about rent a room relief on the A&P forum and ran into the following issue. Link http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056973404

In section 216A “relevant sums” means all sums arising in respect of the use for the purposes of residential accommodation, of a room or rooms in a qualifying residence and includes sums arising in respect of meals, cleaning, laundry and other similar goods and services which are incidentally supplied in connection with that use;

However we found that http://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/housing/owning_a_home/home_owners/rent_a_room_scheme.html also include money received for utility bills as a relevant sum and this was backed up by another poster who was told that this is the case, by Revenue.

Now this doesn't make sense to me as bills taking heating, electricity, phone, water etc could easily be a few thousand every year which would severely devalue the rent a room relief. Also I would have thought that if utility bills were to be included they would be specifically mentioned in the section. I don't think 'other similar goods and services' adequately describes utilities as they are very different to what is listed (although another poster disagreed with me here).

Anyone ever come across this? I couldn't see any Revenue guidance that mentions utilities.
Cheers

Pawwed Rig

Any ideas anybody?