Being fair to residents in Dublin
dublin |
bin tax / household tax / water tax |
news report 
Saturday January 14, 2006 15:57
by seedot
Council endangers public health of all residents
The City council has announced that they will start non-collection next week - with two routes selected to leave rubbish behind. Will your neighbourhood be one of the lucky ones the council has decided to be fair to?
The city Council announced today that they would be leaving bins behind on the streets of Dublin city from next week 'to be far to those who have paid waste charges'.
Is it fair to override the decision of Dublin City's elected ouncillors to collect all bins?
Is it fair to expose the residents of Dublin to the public health risks assocated with uncollected rubbish on our streets?
Is it fair to penalise people for non-payment of a charge which has been found illegal three times in court, decision which the council is now apealing to the Supreme Court?
This decision will affect all residents of our city. In the waste management report for 2004 by the Environmental Protection Agency it was revealed that 220,000 tonnes of rubbish was left around the country to be burned or flytipped as a direct result of non-collection. 25% of households no longer avail of a kerbside collection. In 2003, Doctors in Cork warned of the dangers of rats and Weils disease when rubbish was left on the streets in large uran areas.
The Dublin Anti Bin tax campaign will be calling public meetings this week to discuss how to deal with this decision. But be under no illusions, while it is presented as a mechanism to be fair to those who have paid their waste charges, the impact will be felt by all residents in our city.
Comments (11 of 11)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11is it fair that the councillors decided to raise the lord mayors salary to E63,000, a 10% increase? they held a special meeting at 8 am to do this.
transfer the bins and leave them all outside the council offices. they'd have to deal with them then. anyone have a truck?!
Put the rubbish in bin bags and leave it on the footpath to force a collection
P.S> make sure someone rings the council to highlight the health and safety issue i.e. danger to pedestrians if DCC doesn't remove the footpath obstructions
On Saturday on the 9pm news, RTE did a very pro Dublin City Council piece. It allowed Matt Twomey (Assistant City Manager) tell us that 95% of householders are compliant in paying the charges. They also did a vox pop of two people (in Rathmines village I think) who slagged off non-payers. Not exactly balanced reporting.
Today on Morning Ireland the very same Matt Twomey claims that 82% of householders are compliant. What happened to the 13% in less than two days? I suppose we can expect a lot more council lies in the coming days. They will of course fail to mention that the bills they have sent out have deemed to be illegal by the courts.
Twomey said this morning that the council would have non-collection up and running across all of Dublin within 3-4 weeks.
He also said that they would not immediately be stopping the practice of people dumping there own rubbish in the bin trucks but that if it persisted that the council would enforce the injunction that it had.
Also I'm sure the campaign will have noted that Mella Carroll died on the day that Dublin City Council issued its battle cry. Weird or what?
He quoted 83% of " wheeled bin" customers on Morning ireland. As apartment dwellers and those on baggged collections pay in advance maybe the combined customer base of bins, bags and apartments,is in the 90's.
I don't have them to hand but Councillor Joan Collins requested the figures of those who have fully paid, part paid and not paid etc,.
There is no way that the figures given to her showed that the figures were in the 90s. If I remember correctly about a third had not paid anything. Could somebody from the campaign get those figures out and about to stop Twomey's lies.
Householders in Dublin who haven't paid their waste charges may not have their refuse bins collected from today. As of this morning, Dublin City Council is introducing a new policy on a few routes in the city that will see waste collectors refusing to pick up rubbish left out by people who are in arrears. Instead, the bins will be tagged with a label informing the owner who to contact to settle their account. The Rathmines and Grangegorman areas are expected to be the first affected, but more routes could be added later. The council insists the measure is necessary in order to be fair to people who do pay their waste charges. It has also warned that households who ignore the new policy and leave their bins on the street could be fined up to €3,000.
More than 130 householders did not have their waste collected by Dublin City Council this morning because they had not paid their domestic waste charges - or their bins were not registered. The council expects the figure to rise to more than 150 by the time the collections end this afternoon. Meanwhile, there has been a sizeable increase in calls to the council's Customer Services Centre since it announced it was not going to collect waste of householders who have not paid their charges from today.
The way the council works out payment figures is misleading.
Usually what they do is that those who receive waivers on their bin charges, they mark as paid, since to the council they are processed as it were. Then there is the large group of people who make partial payments. These also get added to the total percentage.
And regarding waivers, as we know from last year, the Competition Authority ruled that waivers were illegal as they amounted to unfair competition and as a result in Limerick the council was forced to withdraw them. I think they same may have happened or at least was threatened in Cork.
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=67640&topic=bintax
And of course, we have to remember that the head of the Dublin City council a few years back, vowed on RTE that as soon as the bin charges were sorted out and fully introduced, he would then proceed to introducing water charges.
A message for the freeloaders who dont want to pay for anything.
Pay up or start recycling.
Thats what many householders have done since the Massive increases in refuse charges.
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