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

Dillon Waste last filed accounts here in 2007, at which time it retained profits of €3.3 million, and Greyhound last filed accounts here in 2009, at which time it retained profits of €8.5 million. How are we supposed to know whether these companies are losing money, are profitable or are going to the wall? There is a proliferation of them. As in the case of Tony Soprano, it was no accident that these companies got involved in waste management. It is a lucrative industry that is very loosely regulated, so much so that when Solidarity-People Before Profit put a motion before a meeting of Dublin City Council last night in respect of the remunicipalisation of the service, it had the support of management. Those in management are tearing their hair out. This year alone, Dublin City Council has spent €1.5 million on the clean-up of illegal dumping. The companies that are making profits from waste do nothing to tackle illegal dumping and so responsibility for it falls to the public services. Management supporting a People Before Profit motion is extraordinary.

Our amendment calls on the Government to immediately commission a report on how best to proceed to remunicipalise the domestic waste industry to achieve an environmentally sustainable waste management policy for the country; extend the current price freeze for all waste management users until the report has been completed; and abolish all domestic waste management charges. I am sure the Minister's response will be to ask where we are going to get the money to do that because we are strapped for cash. When I was a councillor, we were very frustrated in trying to meet the demands of local authorities when we did not get the full property tax back despite it having been imposed on people as an austerity measure. The local authority fund has practically disappeared. The guts were slashed out of it. If even a fraction if it were reinstated, waste management services could be remunicipalised - that is a hard word to say but it is an important word. In doing so, we would be doing workers a favour, the environment a favour and, most of all, we would be delivering for ordinary citizens - the Joe Cooneys of this world - the justice that they deserve. Their pockets are not bottomless: they cannot keep digging deeper and deeper to enhance the profits of greedy profiteers over whom we have no control and who will tell Joe Cooney, barefaced on the telephone, that they can do what they like because the Government does not control them. The Minister needs to address the fact that these companies are making a joke of his Ministry.

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