Make tenants pay for bins
COUNCIL tenants should be made to pay for rubbish bins as part of their weekly rent, according to one councillor.
The suggestion was made following a lengthy debate on the extent of illegal dumping and fly tipping across the county.
Cllr Malcolm Byrne, pictured right, spoke of one Riverchapel resident who has been collecting rubbish in the back yard for two years to the growing despair of neighbours. ‘It’s damaging the environment and the neighbours have to look into this.
A small minority of householders are not dealing with their rubbish properly and this Riverchapel resident has gotten off scot free.’
Cllr Paddy Kavanagh asked if there was any incentive for group schemes whereby residents in small estates can pay for a skip to dispose of their rubbish. Engineer Gerry Forde said Wexford County Council’s Waste Presentation Draft ByeLaws will give council workers more powers, leading to quicker response times to incidents across the county. He said data protection rules prohibit the council from naming and shaming dumping offenders. Cllr Malcolm Byrne asked how come tax defaulters can be named and shamed and illegal dumpers can’t. Director of Services for the Environment John Carley said: ‘ That is a matter for the legislators.’
Cllr Ger Carthy said: ‘It’s all softly, softly. Rural Ireland is being destroyed. We can’t print their names but they can print what we earn every January or February.’
The meeting heard that it is up to a judge to decide how much of a fine to apply to peo- ple caught dumping rubbish illegally, the average fine being around 500.
Cllr Barbara Anne Murphy said ‘CCTV hotspots’ are needed, adding that people who are caught only end up paying off part of the fine. ‘ They pay a fiver a week for a few weeks and then stop paying. It costs a lot less to put rubbish into a bin and they do that meaning residents end up paying twice.’
Cllr Michael Whelan said rubbish dumpers are a huge blight on our countryside. ‘Recently we collected two large skips of rubbish and we did the same this time last year.’
Cllr Pip Breen said: ‘Punish them: name and shame them!’ Mr Forde said he is confident that additional resources being pumped into the dumping rapid response unit will help to solve the problem. He said cameras are time consuming to monitor.
Hugh Maguire of the environment section said litter blackspots have been identified but cannot be revealed for oper- ational reasons. ‘You can’t put cameras everywhere. We do the best we can. People won’t know where they will be so they will need to be on their guard.’
Mr Forde said Wexford County Council has much better waste collection service usage than Kilkenny, where only half of householders avail of the service. Cllr Robbie Ireton said the situation in Riverchapel is totally unacceptable. ‘ This is absolutely crazy with the weather are have been having and all of the birds and the rodents. Hugh is doing his best under difficult circumstances. It’s a private house. The owner should be charged for cleaning it up.’
Cllr Willie Fitzharris said: ‘I think it would be simple to add the price of a bin into the rent.’
Cllr Ger Carthy said the council spent millions on Holmestown waste facility only to sell it to AES, saying now some people do not wish to avail of the service, leading to dumping on country roads across the countryside. ‘People are walk- ing on glass in coastal areas like Carne. We don’t have the funding for the staff to implement the legislation. There is no point in kicking the can down the road. We have this problem in Clonroche, Our Lady’s Island, Courtown, across the county, and we sold out the family silver and trucks and gave it to a private company.’
Cllr John Fleming said it costs people like him money to go see the dumping and to go to court to report what they have seen to a judge.
Cllr Martin Murphy suggested involving the general public, who, he said, should be incentivised to report illegal dumping.
Cllr Willie Kavanagh said: ‘when we were doing it ourselves we didn’t have this massive dumping issue. Mr Forde said two beauty areas near Wexford town, Carrigfoyle and Edenvale had to be closed off due to dumping recently, adding that council staff have been very busy completing clean-ups.