Madam, - I am tired and exasperated at hearing the opponents of paying for domestic wage collection get away with their "double taxation" excuse. Indeed it is the only excuse they ever seem to offer. As has already been written in these columns, payment of ancillary taxes is widespread and by no means confined to bin-charge collection.
Examples are numerous - car tax, VAT on electricity and telephone charges, excise duty on drink and petrol, VRT on motor vehicles, etc. Yet it puzzles me how our normally intrepid media fail to tackle the anti-bin-charge spokespersons on this point. Over many years this facile and erroneous excuse has been trotted out and left unchallenged.
The vast majority of people in every country and town in Ireland accept the idea of paying for waste collection. It is high time, therefore, that the handful of opponents be obliged to give logical and rational reasons as to why, unlike the rest of us, they should be granted the privilege of not paying. - Yours, etc.,
NEIL SHARKEY, Glenard Crescent, Salthill, Galway.