Rip-Off Bin label charges ?...

Paddy20

I live in Donegal, and up until about 5 years ago my household rubbish bin was emptied every week by my local Co Council 'Free of charge'.

Then the Co Council privatised the service and I had to buy a cardboard label for €1 which had to be stuck to the outside of the bin. No label, full rubbish bin outside house ignored, and not emptied !.

Now we have two private operators, and the price of the labels has shot up to €5.50c each [1 per bin needed]

I consider this a really disgusting overly expensive Rip-Off !. Many old age pensioners have to pay the same. Even though they have not had a pension increase to compensate for the extra weekly living cost on their budget. More and more households are dumping black bags full of rubbish on the roadsides creating stinking health hazards.

It would be interesting to know. How much people living in other Counties have to pay, if anything. As personally I consider it a dereliction of duty for a Local Authority to create a health hazard by introducing private household rubbish collection where fees are charged for what always was a Local Authority responsibility.

P.:ninja:

watman

Bin Charges here in Waterford City is €5 per week but from February they are set to come down
http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?s=&threadid=133701
Maybe others will follow suit

slave1

Council charge of 8 yo yos a bin in Westmeath
Private guys servicing the rural areas charge pretty much the same on a quarterly basis

Mossy Monk

bin charges for Waterford County Council people is €7.50 per week for each bin. they also want to increase it. it is ridiculous :mad: :mad:

Paddy20

My God, things are even worse than I thought. Anyone got any ideas about how Local Authorities could be forced to revert back to collecting household rubbish ?...'FREEish!.

Maybe on Environmental Health grounds, as in Donegal the Co Council are being forced to send out teams of workmen to collect the ever increasing piles of burst and stinking black plastic bags that are appearing all over!.

Maybe, a countrywide campaign along the lines of the excellent "IrelandOFFline" internet charges campaign.

Any ideas, campaign names etc !..as this issue imho is basically unjust unfair and a Rip-Off, and I am pissed off ?..

P.:ninja: :dunno: :mad:

sprogman

€6 a bin in Fingal Co. Council per week

But we get the month of Jan free, how kind.....

sparkite

sings "money money money ,money money , in a rich mans world"
get used to the increases.unfortunately nothing is gonna change.

Ripwave

Originally posted by Paddy20
My God, things are even worse than I thought. Anyone got any ideas about how Local Authorities could be forced to revert back to collecting household rubbish ?...'FREEish!.

How about a campaign for the re-introduction of household rates? That should ensure that councils have enough money to collect the bins for "free".

In other words, if you voted for FF or the PDs so that you could get Charlie McCreevys "lower taxes", then you don't really have too much to complain about. If you didn't vote for FF or the PDs, then make sure that whoever you vote for next time has a plan for raising enough money to pay for services like health, education and local services.

sprogman

There was me thinking things would get better :eek: - how wrong was I - after been treated with Court Action last year over the yearly charges, now they want Bin Labels - obviously not many people paid the yearly fee.... looks like they win anyway - no matter what us stupid sods do..... if only there was an election this year - it would want to be a brave politician to come anywhere close to my door..... (Rant over!!!!)

vinnyfitz

Pensioners should be eligible for a waiver from refuse charges. They are in Dublin. If not in Donegal I'd be surprised and it should be easily changed.

Apart from that refuse charges are controlled by the Council not dreamed up by the contractors.

Solution is simple - create less refuse. Recycle more, avoid or return packaging, put out less tagged bags for collection* = save money and don't rip yourself off.

Dealing with waste costs money. Unless we have to pay for it we'll create much more than we need to.

This ain't a rip off issue - should be in "Green issues".




*But don't burn your rubbish its six hundred times as poisonous as using a municipal incinerator

GreeBo

Do you complainers not realise that this stuff costs money to collect?
Would you prefer free bin collection but a higher tax rate?

STUFF COSTS MONEY, accept it and move on.

sprogman

I already pay enough Taxes... and its obiouvs that the money isn't going to any where else - have you been to A&E in the past year...
RIP OFF IRELAND

GreeBo

Originally posted by sprogman
I already pay enough Taxes...

So you think that you pay enough taxes to cover all the stuff that you get from the government?
Do you not realise that the people who pay less than you get the same (and more) services?
Who pays for them?
Why not visit the good old USofA and then comment on A&E?

sprogman

What do "I" or you for that matter, get from the Goverment thats worth paying for ?

slave1

redoxan and vinnyfitz

I think you could be missing the point here, I think everyone realises that there are costs and we should try to be more environmental friendly but

1. Some parts of the country never had to pay for bin collection and are now being forced to pay so they perceive it as a "Rip Off". We already pay our taxes for the government to manage our country which includes council costs. To pay for bin collections is in this case a double tax as up until recently the Gov paid for it out of their/our coffers.

2. I paid 65 squid a year the last year the punt was around for my bin to be collected 52 times a year. If I was to get it collected 52 times a year this year it would cost 416 yo yos - 327 squid. This is over 5 times what I paid a few short years ago. This is not acceptable. I have no plastic or card/cardboard or magazine recycling facility in my area/town/20 mile circle. I have only one place to recycle batteries/paper and its a serious drive away which means further petrol usage which is a bit purpose defeating - also you have to have a car to reach this recycling centre so it limits availability further.
I continue to recycle/reuse as always but there is very limited recycling available.
People were putting out their bin less often and the council then increased the charges to cover benchmarking awards - they should have redeployed the binmen but they're too scared.
Please don't anyone make a comment on returning packaging - the cheap Repak subscription covers virtually all the big offenders, the likes of supermarkets/retailers etc. I have to buy a lot of stuff with excess packaging and it does my head in, but the are essential purchases - nappies etc
If I saw an improvement in recycling facilities then at least I would have some control/satisfaction, but the attitude of charge an arm and a leg to make the problem go away is pathetic.

THis is a rip off issue, we paid taxes to cover this service a few years ago, and now we are still paying taxes and unfair increases in bin charges.

Ripwave

Originally posted by sprogman
if only there was an election this year - it would want to be a brave politician to come anywhere close to my door..... (Rant over!!!!)

Hello? What country do you live in? Here in Ireland we'll be having at least 2 and probably 3 elections this year. (Local, European and Presidential).

Ripwave

Originally posted by slave1
THis is a rip off issue, we paid taxes to cover this service a few years ago, and now we are still paying taxes and unfair increases in bin charges.

That's funny, everyone I know is paying less income tax than they were 3 or 4 years ago. How did you miss out on those reductions?

Johnmb

Originally posted by Ripwave
That's funny, everyone I know is paying less income tax than they were 3 or 4 years ago. How did you miss out on those reductions?

However, the local taxes have increased hugely, and they are what is relevant to bin charges. I can't speak for Donegal, but in Dublin the reason for the increases is simply incompetence on the part of the Council. The classic example being their reaction when they realised how expensive doing up O'Connell Street would be. Their reaction was not "How did the price jump from €30m to €65m?", and it was not "Who negotiated the contracts, and why didn't they put in some sort of price freeze on the quotes?", their reaction was "Where will we get the extra €35m?" When that's the way a business is run, then that is why said business rips off it's customers.

Ripwave

Originally posted by Johnmb
However, the local taxes have increased hugely, and they are what is relevant to bin charges.

I wasn't the one who tried to link local taxes with national income taxes - slave1 is the one who complained that paying for bins is "double taxation".

Paddy20

Maybe if Donegal Co Council had not built so many super luxurious office accommodation buildings and even bought a luxury Hotel to use for more office space for thier ever increasing totally un-neccessary army of overpaid pen pushing computer keyboard punching incompetent administrators.

We might not now be paying a Rip-Off bin labels cost, and if thier was less corruption in Political and big business circles, then joe public might once again have a chance of getting a fair deal on rubbish collection services.

While I am at it. Lets not forget the Disabled and the housebound who have not had any increase in thier allowances to help pay for these new ludicrously high bin label charges, and many of these individuals can not even get to a shop to buy labels, nor do they have cars which they could use to dump thier rubbish along the side of the roads even if they wanted too!.

P.:dunno: :ninja:

Johnmb

Originally posted by Ripwave
I wasn't the one who tried to link local taxes with national income taxes - slave1 is the one who complained that paying for bins is "double taxation".

It is. We are paying two lots of local taxes (and that is not including the percentage on national income tax that also gets allocated to them, making it treble taxation in a way).

slave1

That's funny, everyone I know is paying less income tax than they were 3 or 4 years ago. How did you miss out on those reductions?

I do agree with you to a point, there are less DIRECT income taxes, but there are those that missed out, the aged, the single income family ( big time ), PRSI ceiling keep going up, bands are not being linked to inflation etc etc.

Just because direct taxes are in general going down, that does not give the right to run the country in an inefficent manner where these pass-thru costs hit the people you just gave a tax decrease to.

As single income married guy I have missed out big time when they restricted the marriage allowance band. I'm paying a lot more tax now than a few years ago.

The reductions you talked about are being negated by all the stealt taxes and the increased bin charge income is not being put to environmental causes - in my area anyhow as pointed out my earlier reply.

I can only give my opinion from experience in my area, you've done well in recent budgets, don't mind paying these prices and are happy where the increased revenue is being put, I'm not.

You can agree/disagree but the very debatable that it is a form of double tax

Ripwave

Originally posted by slave1
Just because direct taxes are in general going down, that does not give the right to run the country in an inefficent manner where these pass-thru costs hit the people you just gave a tax decrease to.

I agree entirely - the stealth taxes are a real pain. (The €10 on an ATM or Laser card, and €40 on a credit card are the ones that really get my goat).

But it annoys me to hear people complaining about this "double taxation" malarkey when average after tax income and social welfare income are considerably higher than they were 4 or 5 years ago.

Personally, I'd rather be paying higher income taxes for better services. As it is, all this extra "after tax" income is of almost no use to me because the cost of buying a house is rising far faster than my savings. And that's fuelled at least in part, by the mentality that is driving McCreevys tax policies. The same people who are complaining about bin taxes will probably re-elect another FF lead government the next time round. I certainly haven't heard any pundits predict a collapse of the FF vote in this years Local Elections.

vinnyfitz

Slave1 said

the council then increased the charges to cover benchmarking awards

If the council told you that they are lying! Cullen produced enough extra cash to local authorities to pay this year's benchmarking. Don't let the manager or councillors pull the wool over your eyes

Paddy 20 said

While I am at it. Lets not forget the Disabled and the housebound who have not had any increase in thier allowances to help pay for these new ludicrously high bin label charges,

My point, in my first post was precisely that those on disability or other allowances should be entitled to waivers/free tags and not required to pay for this service. I am amazed if McCloone does not have such a system in place in Donegal?

Typedef

Perhaps the answer is a blanket stealth tax, for everybody, so that the 'idea' of paying for bin collection seems less real.

I think the fact is that the government is following an EU directive from 1991 which stipulates "the polluter pays".

Do I regard this as a Rip-Off?

To be honest, I'd be of the opinion that the Local Authority must be able to account for what money gets spent on, whether or not that money goes directly to a private firm or not.

There must be some sort of cost analysis for collection of bins and if not, then it is possible that profit-taking on the back of this , essentially semi-state industry is taking place, but, again, before one would make such a claim, it would be, par for the course to have cooberative evidence.

Paddy20

vinnyfitz,

Quote: " Those on disability or other allowances should be entitled to waivers/free tags and not required to pay for this service. I am amazed if Mr McLoone [The County Manager] doe's not have such a system in place in Donegal ?" end quote.

I totally agree with your sentiments. However, I have searched the Donegal Co Council website and can find no referance to waivers for anyone !.

Do you know of any Local Authority that has such a Special cases free collection scheme in place ?.. if you do then I would be happy to raise this issue publicly with our Co Council. Who seem to be a law unto themselves and have forgotten that they are 'Civil Servants' which I believe means - Servants of the civilian population- but not apparently in Donegal.

P.:dunno: :ninja:

parsi

Originally posted by Paddy20
vinnyfitz,

Quote: " Those on disability or other allowances should be entitled to waivers/free tags and not required to pay for this service. I am amazed if Mr McLoone [The County Manager] doe's not have such a system in place in Donegal ?" end quote.

I totally agree with your sentiments. However, I have searched the Donegal Co Council website and can find no referance to waivers for anyone !

Did you try ringing them : For further information details on Waste Disposal, contact the Environment Section, Lifford on 074 91 72257.

After all not everything is on a website...
.

Paddy20

parsi,

Thanks for the advice, about the Environment Section of Donegal Co Council along with the phone number. BTW, all that info is on their website!.

Before approaching the bureaucrats in Donegal Co Council. I know from experience that it is wise to have done research and to be able to provide evidence of similar waivers/free schemes as provided by other Local Authorities.

Otherwise, you will simply be given the run around. They love to do that to members of the public, but personally I never give them that opportunity. As I do my homework first.

Thanks for the suggestion though. It is appreciated.

P. :ninja:

byte

Originally posted by Paddy20
I live in Donegal, and up until about 5 years ago my household rubbish bin was emptied every week by my local Co Council 'Free of charge'.

Then the Co Council privatised the service and I had to buy a cardboard label for €1 which had to be stuck to the outside of the bin. No label, full rubbish bin outside house ignored, and not emptied !.

Now we have two private operators, and the price of the labels has shot up to €5.50c each [1 per bin needed]
:

I live in south Donegal and have a choice of 2 operators. I don't think either offer bin labels. You have to rent one of their wheelie bins, or, one of the operators (Donegal Waste Disposal) have bin liner bags for sale in shops at €4.50 a pop. I guess it can only get more expensive as seldom does anything go down in price :dunno:

I just wish my town had bottle banks without having to travel 7 miles if I want to recycle stuff.

Cork

Waste disposal is expensive. EU environmental standards - It is no longer permitted to bury trash in a hole in the ground.

Reycyle, Reduce & re-use

gurramok

Reycyle, Reduce & re-use

Cork, that slogan is used by Greenstar(Sita) waste disposal company and maybe copyrighted, do you work for them ?