Sir, – Pat Quinn’s letter (January 9th) regarding charges for green recycling bags highlights the sorry state of unregulated waste management in Ireland.
While the market for waste management industry has been liberalised following court challenges to the Waste Management Act, no regulation has been put in place.
Dublin City Council Officials ceased provision of a bin collection service through the sale of an “assets purchase agreement” to a private company.
This was despite the Dublin City councillors voting against such a move.
Now the council has no power to regulate waste management contractors and only has power to regulate the householder, the user of these contractors.
We are unable to penalise for missed collections, control prices charged for collections, or prevent charges for green bags, which is against good environmental practice. The council has to pay our own litter crews to clean up after the private collection service takes place. This glaring gap in regulation applies to commercial as well as domestic waste in Ireland.
It’s for this reason that I am proposing at our January Dublin City Council meeting to call on the Minister for the Environment to establish urgently a national regulator for all waste management who would set overall guidelines and that local authorities be appointed as the enforcing bodies.
Let’s hope the Minister listens and takes action. – Yours, etc,