Dublin City Council’s control over bin collection services needs to be restored, a former lord mayor of Dublin has urged.
Labour councillor Mary Freehill has said the city council is being left to clean up after bins are collected in the wake of the privatisation of bin services, and is "powerless" to control this issue.
She told The Irish Times the council can set standards for people using the bin services, but that standards needed to be set for providers of those services. "The situation is very one-sided at the moment," she said.
In a statement, she said: "I want power restored to the City Council to control the rubbish collection service. Yes, there has been some savings by privatising the system - but at a high price.
"We cannot control the service. We cannot penalise companies that miss collections. We cannot control prices charged for collections."
She said that charges had been imposed recently on green bag collections. "This was totally against good environmental practice and promises made to the council," she added.
"We have to pay our own litter crews to clean up after the private collection service takes place. I want the Minister [for the Environment] to give us back the power to control the service again."
The councillor said she will propose a motion at a January 14th council meeting that the Labour group "is very concerned about the multiplicity of legal irregularities committed by private waste management companies in their disposal of waste" and that the decision to charge for recycling bags "is totally unacceptable and flies in the face of EU recycling requirements".
The local authority has the power to make bye-laws requiring users of the services to comply with waste management regulations, she said, but this "does not deal with a situation such as a collector neglecting to collect kerbside waste properly presented on the appointed day,or to comply with EU recycling standards".
Ms Freehill said she wanted to propose that the Minister establishes a post of National Regulator for Waste Management who would set overall guidelines, with local authorities acting as the enforcing body.