Two big reports recommend Dublin City Council get back control of bin collection

Two reports have in recent days recommended that Dublin City Council get back control of bin collection in the city but it seems the central government has no plans to make that happen anytime soon.

Advocates for a change – either to the council providing the service, or to the council contracting out the service and overseeing its delivery – say it would help reduce the rubbish strewn around the city’s streets, among other issues.

The Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action released a report on 15 October recommending that “the Department supports the establishment of a pilot scheme in Dublin City Local Authority to re-municipalise waste”.

Then the Taoiseach’s Tasforce for Dublin released a report on Monday, and among its recommendations was that in the long-term “moving to re-municipalisation of waste management on a phased basis should be considered”, and that in the meantime, the council should contract out and oversee the bin collection service for the city.

“That’s two reports, adding to momentum,” says Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan, who has been a key player in the push for Dublin City Council to get back control over bin collection.

So what’s the central government’s next step on this, given these recommendations?

For the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications to commission a comprehensive study looking at the pros and cons of moving to a “franchise tendering” system, where councils contract out waste-collection services, a department spokesperson said.

“The timeline for completion of such a comprehensive study could be up to 12 months with appropriate procurement,” the spokesperson said.

Then the minister – whoever that is after the upcoming general election – would “consider the content of such a report, when finalised, and any policy proposals for consideration by Government”, she said.

The current coalition’s programme for government had nothing to say on the issue of bringing in new legislation to allow councils to take back control of bin collection, a department spokesperson has said.

Adrian Kane, an organiser for the union SIPTU, which supports a change, said on Monday that “the sitting government have no interest in this whatsoever”.

But Doolan, the Sinn Féin councillor, says he sees the department’s response as “a positive”. “A couple years ago the department was saying no, no, no, and now they’re saying they’ll consider it,” he said Tuesday.

How we got here

Before 2000, Dublin City Council collected bins, but households didn’t pay a separate charge for that.

When the council brought in bin charges, there were protests and loads of people refused to pay them.

Then government policy allowed private operators to begin collecting waste alongside local authorities, in many cases offering lower charges to attract customers, according to  a report on the issue from the Institute of Public Administration (IPA), which it released in January 2023.

In 2008, the four Dublin local authorities got together and made an amendment to the waste management plan for the Dublin region, meant “to ensure that waste could only be collected by councils or contractors appointed by them”, the report says.

Panda Waste Services took the four councils to court, which found that what the councils were doing was contrary to the Competition Act 2002. Now that the councils were charging households, they were “undertakings” operating in a market – and what they were doing was anti-competitive.

“Following on from this decision, local authorities around the country began the process of exiting domestic waste collection entirely, leaving it to operators in the private sector,” the report says.

Dublin City Council left the household waste collection market in 2012, according to a report by the council on the prospect of re-entering it.

Today, any company that gets a waste collection permit from the National Waste Collection Permit Office (NWCPO) can come to Dublin and offer their service to households.

The council does not have control over the waste-collection companies, or how they operate in the city.

The pendulum swings

Dublin city councillors voted in July 2019 that the council should reclaim control over bin collection, which it once provided.

Councillors set up a subcommittee to look at how to push that forward. That subcommittee, led by Sinn Féin Councillor Daithí Doolan, commissioned the report from the IPA that was released in 2023.

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.

At the time, Doolan said the plan was “we’re gonna engage with the unions on this, we’re gonna engage with the public, the Dáil committee and the minister, to see: is there an appetite for introducing legislation? If not why not? If so, when will they do it?”

In July of this year, the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action, chaired by Green Party TD Brian Leddin, held a hearing that looked at the issue. Doolan was among those who appeared to advocate for remunicipalisation of waste collection.

So was Labour Senator Marie Sherlock. “We have a dysfunctional system whereby bins are collected by private companies, creaming profits from households and local authorities are effectively left to clean up the mess in terms of illegal dumping,” she said.

Kane, the SIPTU organiser, appeared as well. A lot of households in Dublin don’t have a bin-collection service, he said.

“There is a causal link between that and the amount of illegal dumping,” he said. “That cannot be overcome unless people are obliged to have a service, which cannot be done unless there is some way in which poorer households do not have to pay the full whack with regard to it.”

Conor Walsh, secretary of the Irish Waste Management Association (IWMA), suggested the government tackle that issue with a voucher programme.

“Like people get a fuel voucher, they would get a voucher from the Department of Social Protection that pays a certain amount towards their waste collection,” Walsh said. “Perhaps then people who cannot afford the service could afford the service and would not resort to illegal dumping.”

The IWMA “strongly opposed” remunicipalisation of waste collection – the council collecting bins again, Walsh said. “We say it will not deliver lower prices or a better service.”

His group had commissioned KPMG to prepare a report about that, which “shows that the transition to such a system would require an upfront spend of between €1.3 billion and €2.7 billion and that costs would continue to be significantly higher”.

Fine Gael TD Richard Bruton pointed to this cost. “The question then is who would pay?” he asked. “This is a major re-nationalisation of a sector.”

The IWMA also opposed “competitive tendering or franchise bidding for household waste collection”, Walsh said. This would reduce competition in the market, he said.

In the end, when the committee issued its “Report on the Circular Economy”, it included a recommendation “that the Department supports the establishment of a pilot scheme in Dublin City Local Authority to re-municipalise waste”.

Then, a few days later, the Taoiseach’s Taskforce for Dublin, made a similar recommendation.

“The biggest contributor to the litter issues in Dublin is the current system of multiple private providers of waste management services with their own operating processes and collection times,” the report says.  This “has created complexity and a lack of accountability in the city centre”, it says.

Next steps

In a 15 October question to Ossian Smyth, Minister of State in the Department of Environment, Climate and Communications, Leddin, the committee chair, asked about the minister’s “plans to change the way waste is collected in Ireland”.

Smyth, a Green Party TD like Leddin, said he’d asked officials in his department to commission a study that would look at transitioning the bin collection system in the country to a “franchise tendering system for local authority areas or regions”.

“Such a system, where exclusive contracts are awarded to waste collectors in specified areas, is generally used in other EU member states,” Smyth said.

It “could have the potential to streamline operations, enhance recycling efforts, and improve overall waste management efficiency”, he said. But the transition could cause “significant disruption”, “if not managed carefully”, he said.

Dublin City Council currently uses a franchise tendering system for other city services, such as parking enforcement. It puts that service out to tender every few years, specifying in the contract it awards what the winning company must do and how.

Does Doolan, the Sinn Féin councillor, see franchise tendering as an improvement over the current system? “It’s a step in the right direction,” he said Tuesday.

Asked whether changing the system for bin collection in Dublin would have to wait until after Smyth’s study is done, a spokesperson for the department said that, actually, the decision was in the hands of Dublin City Council.

“Under the Waste Management Act, waste management is a local government statutory function,” she said. “It is a matter for the Chief Executive of a local authority, including Dublin City Council, to determine the arrangements for household waste collection in their local authority area.”

But a council spokesperson said on Monday that “Dublin City Council has no current plans to pilot recommencement of kerbside waste collection services”. Once Smyth’s study is complete, “the City Council will consider the matter further”.

At the Oireachtas hearing in July, Right to Change TD Joan Collins said it was a matter of political will.

“There was political will to privatise our waste collection services two decades ago. Legislation was changed to allow that. There has to be political will to look at all that legislation and reverse it,” she said.