Republican News · Thursday 22 November 2001

Challenging the Estimates

BY ROISIN De ROSA (roisinderosa@hotmail.com)

Estimates are here again - like Christmas. It's either vote the same old thing, and more of it, or vote yourselves out of a job.

Passing the estimates is your main job as a councillor. If you don't, the Department of the Environment has little use for you, and it will disband you, happily, in favour of a manager, who when the chips are down, is all that is required to replace the councils.

Environment minister Noel Dempsey has decided that troublesome councils' opinions on waste management through costly incinerators didn't matter. If their opinions didn't suit the department and government's privatisation/incineration agenda for the 26 Counties, (and they didn't) then he would dispense with them. And he did. Councils no longer have any say in the matter of waste management in their county.

Except of course when it comes to the estimates, and charges for waste collection. In some council areas this still remains in council hands - to strike the rate and fix collection charges. These charges are just another form of taxation, like a poll tax, charged on a house to house basis, hitting everyone indiscriminately.

In the case of waste charges, which arise in Dublin or Drogheda, where the council is still directly employing waste collectors, the charges are in the estimates, and Sinn Féin councillors are opposed to them. But Sinn Féin policy also holds strongly to an anti-privatisation agenda. Sinn Fein argues that waste collection is a necessary service which must meet environmental standards. Waste should not be collected by private collectors who may well choose to dump it all, unseparated, into the local landfill because its cheaper to do so.

As Sean MacManus, Sinn Féin Councillor in Sligo says, "this country needs a serious waste management policy which composts waste, recycles valuable materials, and dumps the absolute minimum". Private contractors collecting everyone's waste, won't advance a zero waste policy. Large scale, big contract, huge cost incinerators suit private contractors very nicely.

Sinn Féin councillors are opposed to the privatisation of waste collection, as they are opposed to all privatisation of services like health, education, transport, water, sewage, housing. These are services which everyone has to use; they should not be in private hands, as a commodity upon which some favoured company can charge people money, irrespective of their income. Sinn Féin councillors will, of course, be looking at the estimates to see where the councils are facilitating the privatisation of services, the provision of which is a human right.

But that is not all that Sinn Féin councillors will be doing on the estimates. Leading the way are the Dublin councillors, who are looking at ways in which the council can bring more equality into raising Dublin City revenues. In the heated debate last year on the estimates, the leader of the Sinn Féin group, Christy Burke, argued relentlessly against waste charges, in favour of taking B&Bs and private rented accommodation into the rates net.

"In the case of Dublin," says Nicky Kehoe, "there are numerous state owned buildings in the centre of the city which pay no rates to the Corpo, yet there are heavy costs on our corporation budget to accommodating these office complexes. We'd like to see them paying their share of the rates, in place of the ordinary people paying waste charges to buy a service which the council should be providing for everyone alike."

Sinn Féin councillors all over the country have raised the issue of the scandal of private rented accommodation. "This situation has to be addressed. Rack renting landlords, who think nothing of raising rents, in the current housing shortage, by 50% leaps, need to be taxed, through the rates, on these windfall gains. The funds collected should be used by councils to pay for the inspection of private rented accommodation, to ensure that conditions meet the required standards, and that the landlord is registered, complies with fire regulations, and provides a rent book, and some security of tenure to his tenants," says Aengus Ó Snodaigh.

other source of revenue, raised successfully by Sinn Féin Councillor John Dwyer in New Ross, is derelict buildings, where owners of what are often most valuable sites leave them derelict deliberately in the expectation of large speculative gain through property values. The Derelict Sites Act empowers the council to impose a 3% level on the current market value of the property per annum. This offers a council substantial income, unless of course the owner/developer takes on to immediately develop the property, which in the case of housing brings alternative benefit to the local community.

As councillor Arthur Morgan points out, "the estimates might seem a maze of figures designed to blind councillors with statistics, but they govern all. We Sinn Féin councillors need to be actively raising these issues if we are to fulfil our mandate as councillors."