Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

Sinn Féin firmly believes that waste services are core services that must be provided by the State through local authorities and paid for through the central taxation system. Our opposition to service charges is well recorded. They are aggressive and unjust. We made our commitment to the issue clear when we tabled the Waste Management (Amendment) Bill 2003 to amend the Waste Management Acts on the collection of waste and the imposition of charges for waste services and to return the powers for the making of waste management plans to elected members of local authorities. The real motivation behind the introduction of service charges across the State has not been environmental in nature. On the contrary, cash-strapped local authorities have grasped these charges as one of the few finance-raising mechanisms available to them.

There is widespread misunderstanding and malicious representation of the meaning of the polluter pays principle. Its purpose is not to meet the cost of dealing with waste but rather to act as a prevention mechanism against unnecessary waste production and to encourage conservation of resources. It should be primarily targeted at the producers of waste such as manufacturers who produce non-recyclable, non-biodegradable goods and excess packaging, who are involved in the wasteful use of resources and who are responsible for damaging emissions. These producers, not householders, are the real polluters.

If service charges are to be part of a polluter pays system, they will only make sense if the infrastructure is put in place to enable the householder to divert the maximum possible amount of waste from their residual waste collection. There would be no basic or flat charge. Householders would merely be charged on a literal pay-by-weight system for residual waste which cannot be recycled, reused or composted. This is not the case, however, and in the absence of proper regulations and infrastructure to enable reduction, reuse and recycling, householders do not have the ability to divert waste from the residual waste stream.

While we do not accept service charges, we believe that, in light of the refusal of central Government to abandon the current inequitable system, the plight of low income families must be addressed as a matter of urgency. As they stand at present, service charges are an added burden on families already facing financial hardship. These charges, which are increasing dramatically on an annual basis, make low income households relatively worse off than high income households.

The Combat Poverty Agency published a report, Waste Collection Charges and Low-Income Families, in November 2003. Upon its publication, the then Minister for the Environment and Local Government promised to consider the report's findings. In the report, the Combat Poverty Agency stated: "the cost of waste collection charges and other public utilities can be a major financial burden, often associated with an increased risk of indebtedness". It also stated: "Waste collection charges exclusively based on the 'polluter pays' principle are inevitably regressive, posing a major burden for low-income households, especially those with children and other dependants." The report went on to state:

Central government subvention is directed at better-off income tax payers [imagine that] rather than welfare recipients and other low-income households. As a result of this national policy vacuum, low-income households are vulnerable to financial variability depending on where they live, rather than social need or amount of waste produced.

The agency recommended that a national waiver scheme for waste collection charges, which would be administered by the relevant local authority and which would be available from all refuse collection operators, be introduced. A similar compensation scheme was proposed by the ESRI, in a report, Carbon Taxes: Which Households Gain or Lose? which it prepared for the EPA, as a method of compensating low income householders if carbon tax is introduced.

Much of the groundwork on this subject has, therefore, already been well covered and the case has clearly been made. Let us now have some action from the Minister. That is all that is missing.

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