John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Minister knows my views on this. I am very supportive of reducing the waste that goes into landfill and increasing recycling, but I will go back to what happened last year. When the proposals were made to go to a pay-by-weight system to encourage people to change to green bins, and to brown bins for biodegradable material, the people in Dublin who had been used to a multi-bin system saw very significant price increases of 50%, 60% or 70% in the new regime. They were able to compare, year by year and like for like, what the new charging regime would be. I fully accept what the Minister is doing and support pay-by-weight, as well as the diversion from waste to recyclable, but it has to be in tandem with a realistic pricing structure, and this was not the case last summer. We did not have a fair pricing structure and the Minister of the day had to take emergency action. I support the Minister's programme but it has to be underpinned by a guarantee that the increases we were forced to look at last year will not be on the table again this year.

See this speech in context