Householders will have to pay for waste recycling services because Dublin Corporation cannot afford them, Mr John Fitzgerald, Dublin Corporation city manager, has said.
The corporation will debate proposals to levy a charge of £150 on each householder for recycling services over the coming months, he told a conference on waste management.
"Traditionally in Dublin, politicians have resisted imposing charges on householders for managing their waste. . .without finance we cannot continue to provide the new recycling services and to expand them the way we want to," Mr Fitzgerald said.
The corporation would spend over £30 million on waste management this year but that was not enough to implement the Waste Plan, which aims to reach a target of 60 per cent recycling in 15 years, he said. By that time, the four Dublin local authorities would have 16 per cent of their waste disposed of in landfill and 24 per cent thermally treated in incinerators.
Mr Fitzgerald said until recently waste management was the Cinderella service as local authorities did not have the financial resources or the legislative back-up to do more than landfill waste disposal. The Waste Management Act and the Litter Pollution Act had changed that, he said.
"Both of these pieces of legislation have given us the obligation and the power to plan how to manage waste in the future. We now have supervisory powers over private waste companies operating in our area. We can make by-laws to help us manage waste better and we can impose on-the-spot fines and other penalties for breaches of legislation," he said.
Waste policy across Europe was environmentally insufficient, said Dr Christian Hey, EU policy director at the European Environmental Bureau.
While there had been progress on standards of disposal and recycling, the quantity and hazardness of waste continued to grow, he added.
Dr Hey said there needed to be greater dialogue between industry, public officials and environmental organisations to achieve proper waste policy.
Mr Philip Ivey of the Environment Council in the UK told the conference there was a need for people to get involved in working together to make decisions concerning the environment.
He said dialogue had been created with locals regarding London Waste Action and the results were positive.