John Lahart (Dublin South West, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

The Government’s proposals have caused anxiety among customers of the bin companies. A constituent in Templeogue already reports that Greyhound is increasing his black bin lift charges by 23% from €8.50 to €10.50. This matter is striking fear and anxiety into people on low or no incomes and who are reliant on State supports to help them live from week to week. Flat charges enable predictability for vulnerable households and confidence that their bills are static from week to week, allowing them to budget responsibly.

I requested figures today from the housing department of South Dublin County Council seeking information on the number of rental accounts in arrears in the council’s administrative area among its tenant base, which numbers about 12,000 householders. I did this to illustrate the kind of pressure low-income households are under and 60% of tenants of one variety or another are in arrears. These are some of the most vulnerable and challenged communities in Ireland living in my constituency. There are large communities of senior people relying on their life-earned State pension to enable them to live from week to week. Any upward changes made to the demands on their small allowances causes much anxiety and leads to increased hardship. There is also a large cohort of middle Ireland who simply cannot afford a financial shock in any given month, so delicately balanced are their incomes and budgets.

The Minister needs to take a long look at the practices of the main players in the bin collection industry in Dublin because there are sufficient grounds for public disquiet in the manner in which some of these companies operate to such a degree that it is essential that a regulator be appointed. My colleague, Deputy Barry Cowen, wrote to the Minister in October last year and received no response when he alerted the Government to his concerns on a number of issues that had been brought to his attention by whistleblowers with a keen knowledge of the Dublin market. Deputy Cowen requested that the Department, as the overseer of the waste industry, would commission investigations into matters of an anti-competitive nature.

Deputy Cowen alerted the Minister to the need for a widespread investigation into the extent of collusion between waste operators and barriers to entry in the waste market in the Dublin region. Why was this? Dublin waste operators are heavily reliant on each other's facilities and are consequently forced to enter commercial relationships with each other that ultimately diminish competition. If Dublin operators were not as reliant on each other, it is highly likely more competition would exist.

One of the major barriers to entry into the domestic waste market in Dublin for new operators is having outlets for their waste and recyclables. This is particularly the case with regard to the Dublin City Council owned mixed dry recycling facility, which is leased and operated by the market leader, the Panda waste collection company. There is an argument that an independent body should be appointed to run this facility, which is by far the largest in the region, to encourage more competition in the industry.

The Minister was also alerted to the issue of evidence of price collusion when three major waste companies in Dublin announced massive price hikes all on the same day last year before the new charging regime was suspended, indicating a high probability of collusion. There is no legitimate reason the introduction of the pay-by-weight regulations should have led to price hikes by all companies on the same day. In the absence of real competition, providers saw an opportunity to take advantage of consumer uncertainty and to impose price hikes.

There are concerns in the public arena that need to be addressed. These were brought to the Minister's attention by Fianna Fáil and we are still awaiting a response a month later as to whether they are being investigated.

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