A threat by the Waterford city manager, Mr Eddie Breen, to privatise refuse collection was delivered to city councillors before they backed his plan to charge for the service from next year.
In a two-hour meeting which turned out to be as heated as expected, councillors voted on Monday by a majority of one - eight against seven - to introduce the £2 charge for each collection as part of Waterford Corporation's estimates for 2000.
The charge is now a fait accompli, but the controversy over its introduction may be only beginning. Workers' Party councillors, who hold three of the council's 15 seats, said they would take their campaign against the new charge "to the streets" if necessary.
Fianna Fail's four members also voted against the plan. Their position had remained in doubt until the final moment as none of them spoke in the debate which preceded the vote.
Mr Breen took no chances with his proposal, relying more on the stick than the carrot to get it through the meeting. If his proposal to distribute a free wheelie-bin to each household in the city and charge £2 for each collection was not accepted, he would have no alternative but to approach the private sector to ask it to carry out the service.
"It's not a step I would willingly take but I will take it if I have to," he said. Asked by Labour's Mr Seamus Ryan if that meant privatisation within the coming year, Mr Breen candidly replied: "Yes".
If the wheelie-bin proposal was not accepted then "this local authority will not be providing a service this year. By the end of this year we'll be out of it and the private sector will be in," he said.
Old-age pensioners living alone and those considered "hardship cases" will not have to pay the charge, which is to be capped for the first three years.
Mr Breen said the charge was needed because of the huge cost of a new landfill to replace the city's Kilbarry dump. "The reality is we cannot continue to provide a free service to the householders of Waterford city," he said. Opposing the measure, Mr Martin O'Regan of the Workers' Party said it was a form of double taxation. People in the city were "fed up to the teeth carrying the can for people in the golden circle" who were not paying their fair share of tax.
"This is not a threat, it's a fact of life. If we have to take to the streets and take on anybody and everybody in the name of justice and fair play for the people of this city then we will do so," he added.
Several speakers in favour of the proposal pointed out there would be no funding from central Government in the National Development Plan or otherwise to support waste management, as this would be contrary to the EU's "polluter pays" principle.
Fine Gael's Mr Hilary Quinlan said the Kilbarry dump was well past its sell-by date and the council had been advised "six or seven years ago" by the then city manager to start putting money aside for a new landfill. A small group protested outside the City Hall as the meeting took place, chanting "Double taxation - we won't pay." Undoubtedly, some won't.
The meeting was told £840,000 was outstanding in community enterprise charges, commonly known as "water rates", which were abolished in the early 1990s.
Coincidentally, that's about the amount Mr Breen hopes to raise annually through the new refuse collection system.