Sir, – A spokesperson for the Department of the Environment is quoted (Home News, September 7th) as saying that moves to restructure the household waste market are designed to reduce costs to the taxpayer and protect the environment.
Unlike other utilities such as gas and electricity, which have been subject to large cost increases, a recent survey has uncovered a 26 per cent decrease in the annual waste charge to the average householder in Ireland from 2004 to 2011.
The intense competition between waste operators that exists across Ireland is a major factor in these decreasing costs.
Furthermore, earlier this year the European Commission ranked Ireland in first place among the 27 European Union countries for the change in municipal solid waste recycling, up 21.3 per cent in the period under review.
The department has not presented credible scientific, economic or environmental evidence to support the re-monopolising of the waste market under local authority control once again. If this proposed change takes place it will increase the costs of waste services for householders and for businesses, damage Ireland’s business competitiveness, and threaten decades of investment by the private sector in a range of innovative waste facilities in all parts of Ireland. Indeed, planned investment in a number of waste facilities has now been put on hold due to the uncertainty in the market that these proposals have caused. – Yours, etc,