Waste Management & Bin Tax Debate in Galway

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

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.