Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Deputy Gould makes the point that although local authorities have the right to collect the waste themselves if they want to do so, and that it is their choice, he is saying they do not have the funding. Local authorities set their own local property taxes and commercial rates levels. If they want to raise funding to run their own waste collection services, they can do. They also have the incentive that they can charge for waste collection, as a private company does. They could charge a lower fee if they wanted. They can do all of that if that is their choice. If any local authority wants to write to me and tell me that it wants to re-municipalise its waste service, perhaps at the request of councillors, it is welcome to do that. As Minister of State, I am not entitled to overrule the decisions of local authorities and what they choose to do with their waste collection. In my experience, living in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council area, there was a time when the council collected the waste and then private collectors entered the market. When the private collectors entered the market they charged less than the council. They collected green bin waste and brown bin waste, which the council had not been doing. They provided a better service and people chose to move to those private collectors.

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