Bríd Smith urges re-nationalisation after Panda bin charge hike

The news that Panda are hiking up their bin charges will be no surprise to customers who have had to pay hefty bin charges in this country since 2003, roughly, when the move to bring in bin charges was imposed. That was 20 years ago. Myself and about 27 activists went to prison over protest to stop bin charges, not because we are miserable and do not want to pay our way in society, but because we predicted at the time, quite rightly, that it would be a disaster that would lead to the privatisation of waste collection services up and down the country. And that that privatisation would, in turn, be a disaster for workers, for the environment and for the communities which they are supposed to serve. Now, the news that Panda are going to charge for organic waste is an absolute contradiction in terms of what we have been told by the State, by the Department of the Environment at the time and now was the purpose of encouraging people to recycle. That was the reason why bin charges were brought in. In that process of recycling, they are now going to be charged for the organic waste, much of which has been dumped for decades at the back of where I live on Kylemore Avenue, in a facility Thornton's owned. In the last year or so, they have moved the organic waste out of Ballyfermit under pressure from the local community and the constant campaigning for the Environmental Protection Agency that we have had to do. It has been moved out of there and prevented the odours and the inconvenience and the toxic air that has spread through Ballyfermit for many decades. All that aside, we now have a company that was bought over for £1.4 billion from Eamon Waters of Bow Park Utilities by an Australian infrastructure fund. An Australian infrastructure fund is raising bin charges to ordinary consumers by €100 a year, more or less, for 26 lifts. At the same time, what we are witnessing in terms of the privatisation of the service, and anybody who lives in a working class estate particularly will know this, is that every day of the week, not once a week, but every day of the week, dirty large diesel run trucks run up and down estates because of competition. Either people are going to Thornton's or Panda or City Bin. There are a plethora of waste management companies, most of them registered offshore so that their profits are not up for scrutiny. We do have a measure of a lot of their profits and by God are their profits rising. I will read out some of them later on, but their profits are rising astronomically. Even in this cost of living crisis, they are gaining and people are losing out. Is it not time now that this State called for the re-nationalisation, the re-municipalisation of the waste management services throughout the country? It has been a disaster for the environment, for workers, for ordinary people who have to pay the charges, and it is time to reverse that and do the right thing for all of the above mentioned. First of all, I will say to the Deputy that, apart from ideology or whatever, I think we need to analyse what has happened in terms of waste in this country over the 20 years. And you are saying you opposed what transpired in 2003. I was reading recently Mark Henry's book on Ireland, 100 Fact, and we have made extraordinary progress actually in terms of recycling, in terms of reducing our dependency on landfill, and in terms of how we manage waste. So actually, irrespective of whether it is the private public or whatever, the story around waste in Ireland has been one of continuous progress over the last two decades. Of that there is no doubt in terms of, and I know this, because I led campaigns to close landfills, and the landfill that I was anxious to close is now an amenity park, to Chamore Valley Park in Cork City. It was a horrible dump at one stage. And in fact, there was proposals to produce another landfill to replace it. That alternative landfill never got developed. Why? Because there was no need, because of the efforts of household recycling. And that needs to be acknowledged in the first instance. And before we commit ourselves to wholesale renationalisation of the service. I do accept the point that at times, because of the competition that you have spoken about, you can have situations in housing estates where you have a proliferation of different companies going through housing estates. I acknowledge that point. And there is always room in terms of regulating markets and so on to deal with that. But I think the fundamental objective has to be to reduce and to minimise waste and then to ensure it is recycled and so forth. And, as you know, back in mid-2017, the then government decided to phase out flat rate fees for household waste collection. Collection companies are required to charge fees which incentivise households to minimise waste and to segregate their recyclable and organic waste from home. And organic waste from residual waste. And in the interest of encouraging further waste prevention and greater recycling, flat rate fees for curbside household waste collection were phased out again over that period. And the price monitoring group for household waste collection had monitored the market up to the end of 2020 and found that prices in the market were broadly stable. And data from the group showed that offerings in the market had coalesced around eight common price plans with the most common being service charge with a weight allowance plus excess charges above that particular allowance. There is no requirement for a collector to charge fees on the organic bin. Of course, it is open to companies to decide how to structure their pricing and plans. And, again, we will keep the situation under review. We, from an overall government perspective, have done a lot to try and assist people in respect of cost of living more generally. And we do monitor charges across the economy. And we have reduced quite a substantial amount of charges across the economy, particularly public service charges in health and in education over the last 12 months. Our second question is, that if people are incentivised to recycle, they separate their organic waste and their paper and plastic and their bottles and pay for their black bin waste and they do not pay for the recycling, then they are incentivised. That incentive is now being taken from them, by this increase announced by Panda, followed by another increase announced by CityBin, and no doubt, given the competitive nature of this market, market that was designed to be competitive by previous government, the Fianna Fáil government, I understand that this market will increase the prices for everybody to recycle. So you remove the incentive. This is the craziness of companies which are making vast profits, most of which are now going to fund infrastructure in Australia. This is the biggest waste management company in the country. Panda's profits, now owned by an Australian infrastructure company, will help Australia build infrastructure. It does nothing for us here except put more hefty bin charges on people and disincentivise them to recycle. I agree with you about landfill. We are burning our waste out in Poole Beg. We have an incinerator now that we did not have before and we are still exporting a huge amount of waste, much of a toxic waste. Now, if the privatisation of waste has not led to that, what has? We need to take it back into public ownership, control it and stop it being the mode of profit for these greedy companies. The profits are going through the roof. Torrenton's 5.7 million pre-tax profits last year, and as I said earlier on, most of them are offshore. Panda's profits have been enormous, but their prices are going up. You have not answered that. Please, Deputy. I would make a general point. We have many Irish companies providing services all over the world. Wastewater treatment, you name it. High technology solutions. That's what Ireland does today. Talk to Enterprise Ireland and the number of client companies they have who export all over the world, to Australia, to Canada, their services. That's what creates jobs in Ireland. Your model of the economy, in my view, would damage our model, basically, which produces full employment. That is not the argument here. You raised the argument about an international company because it is international and it is problematic. That is part of my argument. What are you going to do? You are disincentivising people by allowing this happen. It is also a consistent thread, which I am not going to take any more. It needs to be challenged. This country has full employment. The enterprise model we have developed over the last 30 years has worked broadly speaking, and you have been against it all of the time. I am entitled to challenge your fundamental premise, which Deputy Byte Barrett shares. You don't have a monopoly of wisdom on how economies get managed. Nobody does. But I am sure of one thing. We have a small, open economy in this country. If we are going to take a protectionist view, that no foreign company can provide any service in this country, that would destroy the Irish economic model. What we are basically saying is no other country in the world should tolerate Irish companies providing good services and high-quality services elsewhere. to disincentivise people as wise, is it? Deputy Smith, will you please, please.