Séamus Healy (Tipperary, Workers and Unemployed Action Group) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on this Private Members' motion. I support the motion tabled by the Anti-Austerity Alliance-People Before Profit and also support the amendment in the name of the Independents 4 Change which calls for a commission of investigation to examine the waste industry and to explore the potential for local authorities to re-enter the waste collection services.

This pay-by-weight bin charges fiasco is yet another spectacular own goal by the former Labour Party Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly. It was not enough to have the debacle of the whole domestic water charges business but the former Minister has now followed that up with another spectacular own goal. The current Minister has announced today that he intends to freeze this pay-by-weight system for the next 12 months. That is simply not good enough - this proposal must be annulled. I hope the proposal in the Seanad later this week will be successful because the whole area of domestic waste charges is a huge rip off of ordinary people right across this country. One has to ask what the Minister, Deputy Simon Coveney, has promised the waste companies from July 2017 on? I believe they have been promised that they can charge what they like. That is something that ordinary families, already put to the pin of their collar by all sorts of other stealth charges-----

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