Army paid a fortune in refuse bills for civilians
THE Defence Forces have spent hundreds of thousands of euro paying for weekly waste collections at a former military housing estate that was sold to private residents decades ago.
All of the 100-plus homes in the Orchard Park estate in the Curragh Camp were put on sale in 1998 and many were quickly bought by private residents.
But the army continued paying for waste collection – at a cost of approximately €300 per house each year – even though Defence Forces personnel no longer lived there.
By 2008 most of the homes were occupied by civilian families yet that year the Army paid Greyhound Recycling and Recovery Ltd €29,510 – or €260 per house – to collect waste.
Answering a Parliamentary Question in 2008 then-defence minister Willie O’Dea confirmed that most of the houses in Orchard Park were in private ownership.
‘Accordingly, neither my Department nor the Defence Forces are obliged to provide a waste collection service,’ he said. Mr O’Dea added that the department was ‘in discussion with Kildare County Council with a view to their ‘taking in charge’ the roads and services in this area.’ ‘It is intended to discontinue the waste collection by the Defence Forces to coincide with the handover,’ he said. Yet a decade later the Army had spent more than €300,000 on further waste collection contracts at the estate and was still signing annual contracts to pay for all homes in the estate to be serviced. Records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act by the Irish Mail on Sunday show that in 2017 all but three of the houses at Orchard Park were occupied by civilian families.
The matter was flagged by an internal audit two years ago at which point the Army had failed to address the issue for more than a decade.
The audit also highlighted how the Defence Forces pay for electricity used by non-military individuals and private businesses at the Curragh Camp before seeking to recoup the cost.
In response to questions from the MoS this week a spokesman for the Defence Forces said residents had been notified that they had to source their own waste collection services from September 2018.