Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We will need one because the issue of charges for green bins came up in the House less than a month ago. This is the waste that generates profit through recycling. The proposal was then retracted by the new Minister with responsibility for housing, planning and local government. We now find that the big cartel companies, Thorntons Recycling and Greyhound Recycling, are doubling and tripling the standing annual charge for households to have their bins collected. I have e-mails from workers in Ballyfermot and Crumlin who have received e-mails from Greyhound and Thorntons asking them to pay three times what they paid previously in the annual standing charge to have their bins collected. Customers pay that regardless of whether they ever put out a bin, when they put out a bin or what it weighs. In addition to pay by weight, which will be introduced on 1 July 2016, these new charges will be introduced on that date. These two companies operate like a cartel because if they were genuinely in competition with each other, they would not put up the prices in exactly the same manner at exactly the same time. James Gandolfini has been dead for nearly three years but Tony Soprano is alive and well in the waste management industry.

We will see many of these issues arise because of the privatisation of an essential service. This is what one gets when one commodifies the application of an essential service, and the collection of rubbish is essential to the running of any country. It was introduced in the 1800s because of the widespread incidence of cholera in our cities so we had a public waste management service. We now have a private waste management service. Illegal dumping is increasing and will increase even further with these costs because people are put to the pin of their collar just to have their bins collected. This is outrageous and must be illegal. We need a waste management sub-committee to look at this and the planned building of incinerators in Poolbeg and Cork.

This issue is pressing and we need to deal with it. Somebody needs to grab these companies, bring them in and tell them that they cannot bring in a 200% or 300% cost increase for something that is essential for people to live. Otherwise, illegal dumping will increase and it will be the local authorities who will pick up the tab, not the private companies who are making the profit. This is why we argue that we need to rescind the section of the Waste Management Act that allowed the privatisation of waste management. We should bring it back into public control and ensure that even if it is paid for, it is monitored and regulated and companies can like this cannot behave in a Soprano-like fashion, do what they like with the bin service and charge people an arm and a leg. I would like the Taoiseach to comment on it and I sincerely urge him to consider having a Cabinet waste management sub-committee even for a limited time.

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