Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I completely agree that this should be discussed at the joint committee. I do not think we have enough time here to work it all out. Several different things arise. The first thing concerns what exactly remunicipalisation is. Does it mean that a council hires workers directly, buys bin trucks and goes back to where it was in the past? Does it mean it would outsource the collection to one particular company, so there is competition for the market rather than competition in the market? Will a tender be put out? What exactly are we trying to do?

Second, what are we trying to achieve? What is the problem we are trying to solve in the market now? Several Deputies raised issues. They are worried that we are not going to meet our recycling targets. We are currently meeting all our recycling targets. Our next targets are due for 2025, and I fully expect we are going to meet all those as well. The other question, then, is whether the charges are too high, if we are paying too much for bins and if it would be cheaper if they were remunicipalised. Exactly what problem we are trying to solve should be written down and should be considered. Deputy Collins said that we need to work out what the principle is. We absolutely must do so. I think we need to agree what problem we are trying to solve, where we are trying to get to, what remunicipalisation is and how we want to go about it.

As I said, chief executives in councils can decide they want to run their own waste collection services, if they wish to do so. They would, however, be running that in parallel with the existing private companies. They would be competing with the private operators. It is another question if we say we want to stop private operators from collecting waste. The Deputies know that in the past the Dublin local authorities got together and attempted to prevent private operators from collecting waste. They were legally stopped and told they did not own the waste householders put out and if householders wished to pay a private collector to collect their waste, they could.

There are different things in play here. If we want to change that situation I referred to and set up a situation where it is illegal for householders to hire somebody else to take away their waste, even if that is cheaper than the local authority, then we will need legislation. We would need to discuss this issue at length. There are many problems involved. I outlined them all. They are not imaginary problems. Previous Ministers have tried to do this and have not succeeded.

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