City ruling on refuse dismisseed

A direction from Dublin city councillors that all refuse will be collected, regardless of whether householders have paid waste charges, "means nothing", according to a senior city official.

Councillors voted by nine to eight on Monday night that the council would collect all domestic rubbish "in order to protect public health in the city".

The councillors' decision would, if implemented, overturn the manager's policy that only householders who pay the waste charges will have their refuse collected.

However, the assistant city manager responsible for waste management, Matt Twomey, said the councillors' decision would not impact on the way waste was collected in the city.

"As the councillors are aware, waste management is an executive function; their vote has no effect, and that was pointed out to them."

He said refuse left uncollected on the day of a normal bin round would not create a health hazard, and the council was removing waste before it could become a public health issue.

"We start by placing red tags on the bags so the resident and their neighbours know the refuse needs to be paid for. We follow that with an examination of the contents so that we can issue a fine. We are not allowing refuse to become a health hazard; about a week is the longest we would leave bags uncollected."

Since January, the council has refused to collect rubbish where people have not attached a prepaid tag. However, Mr Twomey said 90 per cent of Dubliners were compliant with the charges.

"We have sold 159,300 tags and have issued around 150,000 tags to people entitled to waivers. That represents about 90 per cent of people who are tagging their bags. The public is co-operating extremely well."

In the case of "black bins", more than 90 per cent of householders have registered their bin with the council, allowing it to reduce their annual charge by putting out bins less frequently.

The council has issued 1,170 fines to householders who were not paying the charge. Only a small number of these have been paid, but Mr Twomey said in most of these cases the 21-day limit had yet to expire.

Where offenders refused to pay the fine, the council would resort to legal action.

The council was satisfied with the waste-management system it was operating, he said. "The vote means nothing. We're going to continue on as we have been."