David Norris (Independent) | Oireachtas source

It is. I apologise to the Minister. There are approximately half a dozen firms in my area. They are up and down the street at all hours of the day and night regardless of whether people are trying to sleep. Some of these firms are crooks. Does the Minister remember when there was gang warfare? It was like the mafia. They were burning our each other's lorries in car parks. These are the kind of people to whom we are handing over our waste collection. I agree with Senator Grace O'Sullivan and others who have said that privatisation was a huge mistake. Rubbish collection is part of the utilities system. Utilities should never be privatised. What about these companies? I have not been following them recently but in the old days they were based outside this country financially and they returned their profits outside the jurisdiction.

If half a dozen private companies can make a profit from waste collection, why in the name of God can the local authorities not make a profit as well? I speak up for the Dublin binmen because they were the ones I knew. They were very decent people. They made sure that rubbish was not scattered all around and all over the roads. Now, because of the pricing, what do we have all over the city? We have fly-tipping. Nice decent middle-income people from the suburbs drive in in their motorcars and fire out plastic bags onto my doorstep. It is all over the street. There is a very small number of companies as it is now largely a residential street but there are some which do not tie up the bags, which allows the waste to go out all over the street. As for the bags - my God - the green bag is so utterly flimsy that if one puts an envelope into it, it bursts. It is a complete and utter waste of money and a waste of time.

Why should we pay for the bins? We have property tax. What is the property tax supposed to do? I do not know why on earth we have property tax. I will come back to that in a minute. The roads are paid for by car tax, the water is paid for by water rates and the bins are covered by bin charges so what is there left for the local authorities to charge for? Property tax is utterly inequitable. I am amazed that people did not take it on when they were taking on the water charges. Water charges at least had some functional reason behind it because the treatment and delivery of the water must be paid for. That is obvious. One gets sweet damn-all for one's property tax. The charges are paid for out of other income. It goes back to the 19th century and the rack-renting of landlords when, if a decent tenant farmer dared to increase the value and improve his or her property, the landlord immediately increased the rent. This is what is happening with property tax. There should be a rebellion in this country against it because property tax increases automatically with the values of one's house. If the Luas goes past one's front door, the tax automatically increases. The owner has done nothing. He or she has no extra income, but he or she is squeezed again. It is rack-renting. On the back of the bin charges, I believe we should raise a protest against the property tax. We pay twice or three times for everything in this country.