Mr. Adrian Kane:

I will give a brief overall picture of terms and conditions in the private sector and within the industry. We allude in our report that collectors and so on are below the living wage, and drivers are earning somewhere between €17 and €20. Those are headline figures. The problem with regard to the terms and conditions is that, particularly in the private sector, they are usually driven by lengths of runs. Someone could nominally be on that per hour, but their day lengthens. There are few places with overtime payments. Sick pay and pension schemes are also largely non-existent in private sector provision. None of the private sector companies we deal with recognise us for collective bargaining purposes. The EU directive is due to be transcribed in November, but because of its free-market nature none of those things can be built in when a local authority goes to tender that out, which again is completely out of sync with the situation in other EU states.

The point that we would make is that this would be a two-step process. We have to get back to single provision within a local authority area. Through procurement, we can then build on a system whereby standards have to be reached in terms of environmental standards and the quality of the labour contract.

We have all said that in turning this around we can have a system that is much more sustainable for the environment. We cannot have multiple providers going up our streets every day of the week. Nobody else does that. We cannot have a bring centre in the middle of high-density housing when there are also multiple providers. There can be a win-win solution for the environment, residents and workers if we restructure the system in a two-phase process whereby we have single provision in a local authority and build up good procurement standards by allowing the local authority back into an area.