They worry that without more serious competition, or price regulation, the company will feel free to keep hiking prices.
After the waste management company Panda increased its prices again, Fingal county councillors in Dublin 15 brainstormed ideas to rein in bin charges.
In May 2023, the company put a €3.80 fee on lifting brown bins for compost, Solidarity Councillor John Burtchaell told the Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart/ Castleknock/ Ongar Area Committee on 7 March..
In March of this year, Panda hiked its general waste bin charge from €10.25 to €11.75 per lift – so, every two weeks – as well as its half-yearly service charges, Burtchaell said.
Other companies such as Greyhound, Thorntons, and City Bin have also raised their prices relatively recently. But the Dublin 15 councillors were focused on Panda.
It is the only waste collector in many parts of the area, Burtchaell said. “And they’re hiking their charges continuously.”
To prevent any further increases, councillors in the Blanchardstown area have been throwing out possible solutions.
Burtchaell has called on the Minister for the Environment to regulate prices in the waste sector.
Others have suggested that Fingal County Council introduce a competitive waste collection operation in the area to address the lack of choice, and Panda’s stronghold.
Panda did not respond to queries about its price hikes.
A council spokesperson said that licenced operators are free to offer their waste-collection services in any location.
John Daly, a senior engineer in Fingal County Council’s Environment Division, said at the area meeting: “I don’t really need convincing that there should be [new] regulation or some improvement in the waste collection market at the moment”.
But making those changes could be complicated and need legislative change, councillors were told by Daly.
Fingal County Council stopped its household waste collection service in 2010, according to the council website. The next year, it transferred that service to Panda.
There was a contract for the sale of the business, a council spokesperson says, but no obligations to the council after the first year.
Panda’s household collection system of dry recyclables, food waste and residual waste covered 70,000 homes in Fingal by 2014, according to an Environmental Protection Agency report.
That was most of the homes in the county. In 2011 there were about 93,000 households in Fingal, and in 2016 about 97,000.
Panda’s service was reliable, says Nancy Byrne, a resident of Balbriggan across the county from Dublin 15. “The only real issue I had with Panda was the fact they’d a [near] monopoly in the Fingal area ever since FCC outsourced the service.”
Many areas, especially in Dublin 15, don’t have any other option, but to stick with Panda, said Burtchaell, the Solidarity councillor, on Friday evening. “And there’s been a raft of charges they’ve introduced over the last year.”
As in the rest of the country, any company that gets a waste collection permit from the National Waste Collection Permit Office (NWCPO) can come to Fingal and offer their service to households.
Conor Walsh, secretary of the Irish Waste Management Association, says that, although there are areas where only a single company offers household bin services, the threat that if that company raises its price too high a competitor could swoop in and steal away its customers with a better offer is always there.
So that keeps prices under control even in areas where customers only have a single option to choose from, Walsh said.
But a Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC) report from 2018 found that the Irish waste collection sector is atypical among European state – because it assumes this side-by-side competition will happen.
It is set up with the premise that many operators will compete in the same areas and that this competition will drive better prices and service.
In reality, the market is highly concentrated and that isn’t going to change, found the CPCC report, which recommended that the state establish an economic regulator for household waste as a counterweight.
Not all of Fingal has a single operator. Among the others is Bord na Móna Recycling, which added Balbriggan and Lusk to its routes in February 2024.
After, Nancy Byrne switched from Panda to Bord na Móna. The latter’s monthly charge of €17.49 was less than what she paid previously, she says.
Solidarity Councillor John Burtchaell has called on the Minister for the Environment to establish a regulator to fix waste collection prices at an affordable level in Dublin 15.
At the 7 March area committee meeting, Burtchaell tabled a motion saying Panda was exploiting its position as a near-monopoly waste collector. “In many parts of Dublin 15, they’re the only waste collector,” he said.
A regulator with powers to restrain price increases should have been put in place years ago, he said, “and in the absence of that, they’ve run riot and the people of Tyrrelstown, Wellview and many other areas are paying the price literally”.
At the most recent area committee, on 4 April, councillors floated other solutions in the written questions that they submitted to the council’s chief executive, AnnMarie Farrelly.
Fianna Fáil Councillor J.K. Onwumereh asked if the council would consider introducing a competitive operator in the area to address the present lack of choice.
Fine Gael Councillor Steve O’Reilly asked if the council could review how privately operated waste collection services operate within the local electoral area.
O’Reilly wanted to know if a tendering process would be recommended to help increase competition due to providers currently choosing not to “’cross operate’” against each other, he said.
Neither Panda, Thorntons nor Greyhound responded when asked if they had chosen in some way not to operate within the same areas.
Panda services a majority of the Dublin 15 area. However, some pockets are covered by other providers, like Thorntons, which collects household waste in Clonsilla, according to its website.
Both Panda and City Bin collect waste in around Porterstown, said Damien Carbery of the Riverwood Residents Association.
On Friday evening, Burtchaell said that, in the Blanchardstown-Mulhuddart area, Panda covers Tyrrelstown, Hollystown, Waterville, Corduff, Wellview, Saddlers Estate and Mulhuddart Wood.
In areas like Tyrrelstown, dumping and littering is a prominent problem at the moment, says councillor O’Reilly. “When people feel the cost of living crisis and there are these charges coming in, no doubt that has encouraged this.”
Daly, the senior engineer in the council’s Environment Division, said at the meeting that he didn’t need convincing that there should be some more regulation in the waste collection market.
But “I suppose, to reverse the current situation could be quite messy,” he said. “Where you want to get to might be good, but it could be a job making that journey.”
To both O’Reilly and Onwumereh, Daly said that for the council to be able to control the market for household waste collection, it would require legislation to either introduce competitive tendering or provide collection itself.
This is what a Dublin City Council committee also learned last year after it commissioned a report from the Institute of Public Administration.
Among the report’s conclusions: if the council is going to get control of waste-management in the city again – and either 1) pick up the bins itself, or 2) tender for a company or companies to do that – the Oireachtas will have to pass legislation to allow that to happen, legally.
But in the government’s “A Waste Action Plan for a Circular Economy” plan, the national waste policy for 2020–2025, it envisions keeping the current system of private companies competing in the market, while stepping up regulation and enforcement.
A spokesperson for the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications said in line with the Waste Action Plan, Department officials are working with the NWCPO to examine whether fair and transparent pricing is consistent in the market.
Officials and the NWCPO are also carrying out a study on incentivised charging structures, the spokesperson says.
The government should tell communities directly about plans for new asylum shelters, some activists and politicians say.
The current skirmish is over a Manna base at Junction 6 in Blanchardstown.
The idea is for this spot next to Dublin Castle to host choirs, chamber music, trad music, poetry performances, and more.
