Dublin city manager confident refuse charges will be approved next month

Refuse charges in Dublin are inevitable and a broad consensus on their introduction should be worked out within the next month, the city manager Mr John Fitzgerald has said.

Speaking after the City Council's refusal to pass a package of waste management proposals last Monday because it contained charges, Mr Fitzgerald was confident the charges would be approved at the council's next meeting in June.

The 15-year plan includes the introduction of wheelie-bins, an ambitious 60 per cent recycling target, thermal treatment of 25 per cent, with just 16 per cent being sent to landfill. While he admits the plan is ambitious - at present just 6 per cent of waste is recycled - Mr Fitzgerald says it could be in place in 20 months.

However, the start-up costs amount to about £15 million, and Mr Fitzgerald said he was "not going to commit the corporation to expenditure of that magnitude when everybody knows that there has to be a household charge, when everybody agreed the waste management plan - there is nothing in these proposals which was not in the waste management plan - and when everybody knows that the volume changes in waste reduction won't be achieved without a charge.

"We have no money for this, the Government is not going to give us the money, and to raise the money from commercial rates would require an increase of about 20 per cent in the commercial rate, which is just not possible." The corporation's plan was passed by the city council in November 1998, in tandem with the other local authorities in Co Dublin. Since last year's local elections city and county councillors have been jointly briefed twice, while the city councillors have been briefed four times.

"I don't care how many meetings we need to have to achieve a broad consensus to get this measure through, but we must do it" he said.