Mr. Daithí Doolan:

When we speak about the environment, the two key strategies for Dublin City Council and the regions are the regional waste management and climate change strategies. The companies that collect domestic waste in Dublin have no act or part to play in those strategies. We cannot impose them on them or work with them because they are beyond our control. Companies get a licence, go out and collect rubbish and then get rid of it. That system is archaic. It is not environmentally friendly or good for householders. It contributes to emissions and congestion and does not allow us to modernise our waste management service.

Waste management needs to be about more than bins being collected. Nobody has a magic wand to make waste disappear. The companies providing the service do not have any magic wands or bags of fairy dust to make them compliant with the climate change or regional waste management strategies. We want to bring the collection of waste into those strategies. We cannot do so at the moment because we have no control over the companies that provide the strategy.

We need to ensure that we have a comprehensive waste management strategy, by which I mean the waste collection service is part of that strategy. At the moment it is not. We need to benefit the environment by bringing it in-house and making it part of the strategy so that we can control and direct it and hold those providing the service to account.