Aengus Ó Snodaigh (Dublin South Central, Sinn Fein)
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Question 358: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government the number of private waste companies operating door-to-door waste collections for local authorities; the type of material collected; and the annual cost to each of the local authorities of the contracts. [19752/09]

John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)
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Under the Waste Management Acts the statutory responsibility for the regulation of private waste collectors rests with the relevant local authorities. Consequently, my Department does not maintain data on the number of such service providers. In most cases these service providers act on an entirely commercial basis and are not contracted to provide services on behalf of a local authority.

In relation to the types of material collected, the Environmental Protection Agency is the national repository for waste statistics and the most recent data from the Agency are contained in the National Waste Report 2007 available on www.epa.ie.

Traditionally, local authorities were the main operators in the waste collection market. There have been rapid changes in the waste management sector over the last decade due to the increased involvement of a developing and consolidating private sector and, as a consequence of this increased involvement, the private sector is now the dominant collector in at least 20 of the 34 local authority areas.

Currently the collection of household waste from single dwelling households is either carried out by the local authorities themselves or by private sector companies entering the market in direct competition with the local authorities i.e. "competition in the market" leading to a situation in many instances where the local authority has simply withdrawn from the market as a service provider.

A High Court action was taken late in 2008 by two private sector waste management companies to seek to prevent the Dublin local authorities from using their existing powers to vary the Waste Management Plan for the Dublin Region by inserting an objective in the Plan that the collection of household waste from single dwelling households be carried out by the local authorities themselves or that the local authorities make arrangements by way of a public tendering process for the collection of such household waste i.e. introduce "competition for the market".

The outcome of this High Court action, which is expected shortly, will have clear implications for the future direction regarding the regulation of the waste management sector generally and will further inform what measures may be necessary to underpin sustainable waste collection services, whether delivered by the private or public sectors.