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Waste Management & Bin Tax Debate in Galway
There was a meeting on Tuesday night of the Galway City Council Environment Strategic Policy Committee. Bin Tax was discussed. Here are a few details of the meeting. Only Catherine Connolly of the Labour Party opposed the bin charges. Also present at the meeting were councillors Colleran PD, Declan McDonnell PD, and Michael Leahy (Fianna Fáil). Also present were Niall O Brolacháin (Green Party) as a community rep and another man as a business rep. There were also 2 people who are working at City Hall council. They were discussing proposals of Flat Rate plus pay by weight or pay by volume.
The main thing that stands out is Niall O Brolacháin's proposal. Maybe he can post the full thing here, but here are two extracts which I found disturbing. (Unfourtunately I did not manage to discuss this with him afterwards as I was wrecked after the meeting and just didn't want to discuss anything, and I also didn't quite pick up on how significant some things were until I re-read his proposal later).
In Galway there are 3 bins. Brown for compost, green for recyclables, and grey for landfill.
He proposed a flat rate of 80 per annum, with a view to getting this paid for by the government - out of central taxes- in the long run.
On top of this he proposed a 10 Euro charge for the Grey bin (for each collection) and the thing that really surprised me a 3 Euro charge for the recylables bin. He proposed no charge for the brown bin (the council is not proposing to charge any volume/weight extra for this because of the potential for health hazard).
What was even more disturbing was the part where he proposed what would in essence be an atttack on the already limited waiver system. This is from his proposal:
'That a generous waiver system be put into place for pensioners, students, unemployed people and those on low incomes. This should comprise of no flat charge and 13 free collections of each of the Grey and the Green bins or 26 in the case of families of two or more children.'
The Green and Grey bins are collected every two weeks, ie 26 weeks a year. So bigger families would still get this free, but for the smaller families they would have to pay if they put the bins out over 13 times out of the possible 26 times. The bins are fairly big so there would be the odd week that they might not be put out, but I think that they could easily end up paying for some of the bins. I think this would be the thin end of the wedge. This is not even to get into such issues as if a person is living in a shared house where others are working do they get a waiver? and I know someone receiving a supplement from social welfare because of low income and she has to pay the bin-tax!
He also recommends
'A collection system for bulky items and white goods (fridges, cookers, etc.) needs to be put in place. I would recommend a graded tagging system for these based on size and cost of disposal.'
At the meeting, before they discussed the bin tax they discussed illegal dumping. The obvious solution is a proper service, paid for out of general taxes.
Catherine Connolly, Labour Party spoke out strongly against the tax.
She pointed out that it would increase illegal dumping. She said that people were already paying taxes and that this should be looked on as an essential service. She said that the polluter pays argument just made her laugh and that the polluter had never paid in Ireland. She said that they were talking about taking the person who made the least amount of rubbish and making them pay.
She advocated a closer look at Zero Waste management and wanted to get some experts on this in to talk to them (she has obviously been arguing this for quite a while). She pointed out that people were self motivated to recylce, which can be seen from the figures in Galway, and that people took to this without an incentive, and even when the bin charges went up. She spoke about incineration and how the charges would go up when this came in. (The city manager said Galway is to get an incinerator in spite of the fact that 22,000 signed a petition against it some years ago).
Declan McDonnell (PD) advocated non-collection for non-payers and suggested that people having difficulty with paying should go to organisations to help them (presumably charity).
These are some of the main things that stood out to me.
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galway |
bin tax / household tax / water tax |
news report
Wednesday November 12, 2003 03:02
by Orla Ni Chomhrai - SWP
nichomhrai at eircom dot net
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Comments (5 of 5)
Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5One thing that seems to have been overlooked by those who advocate people saving money by putting their bins out less frequently than once a week is the implications for public health. If I cut down on my waste to such a point where I only need 13 collections a year, that makes a median 4 weeks between collections. So I'm supposed to have rubbish hanging around my dwelling for 4 weeks plus at a time. Hardly progressive in terms of hygiene - as it is if I miss a collection one week the place starts to stink (no garden) and, particularly in Summer, flies and various other disease vectors accumulate around the bags. This is what is actually being advocated by the Greens! Compare this to continental cities where waste is collected on a daily basis in many cities such as Paris for public health reasons.
All these debates and discussions have been had already in Dublin over the past 5 years. Quite frankly I am fucking sick and tired about hygene, bins, only every two week with a tag, do I won my bin? wankology!!
People are in prison for fighting for the working class movement. This is a battle of the working class for taxation justice not about the details of bin collection.
I would agree with Chekov that there are public health issues relating to non-collection / less frequent collection of bins (this is not a new argument - it has been used for 125 years to ensure collection of all bins).
I am confused By Niall's proposals and would appreciate further explanation. What is the 80 paid from central taxation in the long term for? Is this to accept a flat fee and then aim to return responsibility for paying this to central taxation, but not immediately? How do you propose justifying collection of the 80eu from the citizens of Galway, since those proposing the fee believe it should be paid by central taxation? (Or is this a clever tactic to strengthen non-payment by saying it will only be for a while - hold out and we'll get it off the govt. in a bit).
How does charging for something that you want to increase send a signal through the market that this should increase? (increasing price lessens demand, in this case for recycling services, rather than increases). Or is the price differential between grey and green bins supposed to provide the market motivation?
Is this report incomplete or did Niall have proposals on the supply side as well (re. the supply of recycling services?) Zero waste management seems to offer potential here which would be more effective.
Interesting point - even though we are told that everybody in the country has been paying their bin taxes for years and it's only the spongers in Dublin that have a resistance, the PD proposal reveals that ALL bins are collected in Galway and bin tax struggle in Dublin is the first area that has had to deal with the reality of non-collection. Is this the case? (I know non-collection has started / been approved in Cork - where campaigners previously defeated it by having the right to have your bin collected proven in the Supreme Court previously. But this came after Dublin?). Would Niall support the non-collection of untagged bins and the rolling back of the public health rights which were won in the 19th Century?
BTW - thaks for the report Orla.
Niall made more comments, but I picked out what I felt were the most significant. He did not mention incineration in his proposal, and I don't think he mentioned it on the night. He did not mention Zero waste management either, it was Catherine Connolly who brought that up. He did make some remarks about expanding the range of products for bring centres and about ongoing education in relation to recyling.
He obviously does support bin tax. His first sentence on his proposal is
'Broadly I would welcome the proposal on the grounds that is based on the polluter pays principle.'
On the Health Issue, as the Brown bin (food, leaves, and basically things that rot) would not be tagged that would continue to be collected every 2 weeks as it is now. It was on the grounds of health and safety that the non-tagging of this bin was proposed. This might make for an interesting argument in Dublin, if bins which have rotting food are not being collected. Also if Galway implements non-collection for anyone who has not paid the basic Flat Rate I am wondering will non-collection include the brown bin. There is also the issue that certain items in the Grey Bin would have staining from food so could not be put into the clean recyclables bin, but they would still potentially attrack vermin, flies etc.
- What is the 80 paid from central taxation in the long term for? Is this to accept a flat fee and then aim to return responsibility for paying this to central taxation, but not immediately? How do you propose justifying collection of the 80eu from the citizens of Galway, since those proposing the fee believe it should be paid by central taxation? (Or is this a clever tactic to strengthen non-payment by saying it will only be for a while - hold out and we'll get it off the govt. in a bit). -
Niall wanted a phasing out of the flat rate altogether so I think the 80Euro was probably the best he thought he was going to get. He might answer this himself though. Personally I think if he can see the logic of getting funds from Central Government for some of the bin-tax I don't see the logic of looking for funds for only some of the service and not all.
- even though we are told that everybody in the country has been paying their bin taxes for years and it's only the spongers in Dublin that have a resistance, the PD proposal reveals that ALL bins are collected in Galway and bin tax struggle in Dublin is the first area that has had to deal with the reality of non-collection. Is this the case? -
Yes. I know someone who has not paid the tax in years and her bins are being collected. But they have started to send out threatening letters. One part of Nialls proposal gives the impression that he is looking for the council to deal with non-payers - this is not exactly what he is saying but would be the result of what he says.
'That proper and transparent procedures, be put in place for dealing with people who deliberately contaminate their waste, people who refuse to pay for their waste collection and people who dump illegally.'
Whatever else the arguments are, the bottom line is that waste managment is going to be worth hundreds of millions. To suppose that the government and private waste companies are not aware of that is just ludicrous.
If we take the latest census figures for the number of households in Dublin, they reveal that there are 379,372. Rounding this to 380,000 and multiplying by 600 then we get a total of 228 million for income. The 600 figure is considered the upper ceiling for these charges according to the government. The charges are already around 500 euro in Sligo.
Various estimates are knocking around, saying the bin service is only costing for the whole city somewhere between 15 and 30 million. That still leaves an awful lot of profit.