Cork councillor in sit-in over uncollected waste

cork | bin tax / household tax / water tax | other press

Monday January 31, 2005 17:49

by ABTA

A Green with backbone?

A Green Party councillor is staging an all-day sit-in the Cork City Manager's office today to highlight what he claims is the serious health and safety crisis facing the city due to non-collection of waste.

"There are now thousands of black bags lining the streets of Cork," Mr Chris O'Leary said today. "The City Manager's only response so far has been to put illegal dumping stickers on the bags."

"While it is vital to tackle the issue of illegal dumping, simply leaving the bags on the streets, as is currently happening in Cork, is not the answer. As a result we are now faced with a serious health and safety crisis."

It is understood that people are dumping waste illegally to avoid paying bin charges. Mr O'Leary is calling for the waste to be removed before the issue of illegal dumping is tackled.

"We regret that we have been forced into the necessity of taking this stance and having to take over the office of the City Manager, Joe Gavin," he added.

"But we have no alternative seeing as he has failed to respond to this mounting health and safety crisis."

© 2005 ireland.com

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Comments (6 of 6)

well

by Anti bin tax

Mon Jan 31, 2005 17:54

you should have thought about that before your party voted in bin tax accross the country

good for cork

by .

Tue Feb 01, 2005 01:26

good for the people of cork. as for the greens they are a disgrace for supporting the bin tax.
Do they support the water tax in the north?

The Greens have been naive

by Terry

Tue Feb 01, 2005 12:33

The Greens have been totally naive over the whole Bin Tax issue and now they have egg on their faces and would appear in the case of Cork have noticed which way the wind of public opinion is blowing.

The Greens support the idea of The Polluter Pays Principle -that seems fair enough.

The councils then announced they were introducing charges. The Greens then took this as the 'Pays' part in the above principle and automatically supported it. According to them from that point on we were on the green and sustainable trajectory. Even a cursory glance would have shown this to be false. But the Greens would not be diverted from their stance.

But any sane purpose was able to draw the following conclusions:
1) Since it was mainly FF and FG introducing waste charges, there was no chance in hell that either of these parties firmly tied to capitalism -that unsustainable form of running society -could ever possibily promote or possibly bring about a green and sustainable solution for anything.
2) The waste charges were always the precursor to privatisation
3) The very fact that the government balked at introducing a levy on excessive package was another rat in the pack. The plastic bag levy was a cover for this and represented the very mildest form of this.
4) There were and still are plans for 6 incinerators in Ireland with a particularly massive one for Dublin.
5) All waste arguments over waste have always been poised as Landfill vs Incineration
6) No significant resources had been nor still are put into recycling facilities.
7) A factory already exists in Ireland to recycle plastic bottles (from Europe), but no serious attempt has ever been made to utilize this
8) The promised brown compost bins still have not arrived.
9) And most glaring, the original waste charge was a flat fee based system -with absolutely no incentive to recycle.
10) Waivers were never going to last and haven't
11) It was a double tax from the start and a way of creating whole new industries to fleece the people
12) It was is a public health nightmare. A throwback to the days before waste collection existed.
13) It was inevitable that charges would encourage dumping and cowboy operations. It has.
14) Persistant rumors that much of the recyclable material is going to landfills either here or in faraway places like China.

Now some folks might say the introduction of pay-by-weight now makes it all okay. It ain't so. Just yesterday, I heard that down the country, they have already started to charge for Green Bins. Now where is the incentive there?

And the plans for the incinerator(s) have not been scraped. There has been a big ruckus in the media from the government about all the new Bottle Banks, many of which are very visible, but that section of the waste stream only accounts for a tiny percent. So it has no impact on any new material that could be recycled.

And most of the Bring Centres are simply too far away for people to get to, especially those without cars.

I will say it again. The system is been set up to fail on the recycling front. This will then justify the introduction of the TOXIC waste incinerators. Charges for Green Bins will destroy recycling. Industry will be happy. They will have a new monopoly for something people need to use. They will make money on collection, then more on running the incinerator. And of course execessive packaging will continue to become more excessive (with less in the box).

And finally once it is in the hands of "prviate entreprise" pay-by-weight schemes will be scrapped. The government will be powerless (as they intend to be).

It's time the Greens looked critically at trying to achieve their aims of a sustainable world whilst living in a capitalist world.

Well written Terry

Tue Feb 01, 2005 14:29

Just to add a report from the Examiner:

Councillors hold sit-in over bin policy

Eoin English
CORK’S city manager insisted there will be no change in Cork City Council’s bin collection policy last night, despite a day-long sit-in in his office.
Joe Gavin said the full rigours of the law will be brought to bear on people who dump illegally.
He made his comments after four city councillors occupied his City Hall office to highlight what they said were major faults in the city’s new bin collection system.
Councillors Mick Barry, Chris O’Leary, Jonathon O’Brien and Annette Spillane blamed a spate of illegal dumping on the flaws in the system.
Under the system, bins must be tagged for collection. But tags are being stolen and council workers are under instruction not to collect untagged bins.
Hundreds of bins have not been collected and illegal dumping has increased, the councillors said.
Mr O’Brien said he counted up to 300 illegally dumped bags in his ward.
The councillors met Mr Gavin yesterday morning to try to persuade him to change the council’s policy.
But when Mr Gavin indicated there would be no change, the councillors refused to leave his office.
They suspended their protest just before last night’s council meeting.
Mr Gavin restated the council’s position during the meeting.
“We will not allow a small minority of people to besmirch the environment.
“We will gather evidence and prosecute illegal dumpers. We will pursue them through the courts.”
Meanwhile, up to 70 people attended a public meeting organised by the Householders Against Service Charges group in a city centre hotel last night.
A major anti-service charges campaign is planned.

Holy Mary

by pc

Tue Feb 01, 2005 16:20

Image of the stae of rubbish in Cork

by Stephen

Tue Feb 22, 2005 15:47

I'm amazed at how quiet noel o flynn and all the other FF td's in the northside are...
I'm also amazed at the cork corporation manager.
He acts more like a dictator rather than a service provider...he should be forced to resign

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Cork councillor in sit-in over uncollected waste

Comments (6 of 6)