John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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14. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if the Price Monitoring Group will display the prices for each company that it monitors on its website in the interest of transparency for consumers of the household waste collection market; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [23969/18]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The Price Monitoring Group is displaying the prices for each company that it monitors on its website at present and it has published the detailed data on the prices it is tracking on a monthly basis. The most recent analysis from April was published on 25 May 2018 and is available on my Department's website. Last summer, I established the Price Monitoring Group to monitor pricing developments for residential household waste collection services during the phasing out of flat rate fees. The Group is chaired by Mr Frank Conway, an independent financial expert.  The membership of the Group also includes a statistician from the Central Statistics Office and Shelfwatch, an independent price monitoring group.  The Group monitors 26 service providers; this comprises 19 individual companies with several of those being monitored in more than one area. I have recently decided to extend the operation of the Price Monitoring Group to the end of the year to continue it monitoring of pricing developments.

The Price Monitoring Group was not established to provide a price comparison service. This would require whole-of-market monitoring of the sixty plus household waste collectors in the country across the different areas they provide a service. Accordingly, while the company names are not currently being published, the prices quoted by the companies being tracked are made available by the Group for all to see.

The Chair of the Price Monitoring Group, Mr Conway, has recently reported to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment that while fluctuations in prices and service offerings have been observed, the overall trend is relative price stability for householders.  The Price Monitoring Group has reported that there are currently 9 different types of price models on the market. The main price examples include a service charge plus charge per bin lift, with an excess per kg charge, and a service charge plus per kg weight charge. The most popular service offering now is the ‘service charge including weight allowance, plus per kg charge for excess above allowance’.