Republican News · Thursday 7 March 2002

Legal Challenges to bin charges

Dublin South Central representative Aengus Ó Snodaigh is pictured on a Sinn Féin picket of Dublin City Council's meeting on Monday evening demanding an end to unjust bin charges

As thousands of people in Dublin City face prosecution for non-payment of bin charges, two recent court decisions have placed the legality of collection charges in doubt.

The most important of these decisions came in Cork at the end of last year. Cork people have refused to pay waste collection charges, which were first imposed in May 2000. Cork Corporation was implementing a sticker system, which enabled their collectors to establish who had paid and who had not paid. Those who had not paid would not have their refuse taken away.

This practice was contested to the High Court, where Alderman Con O'Connell argued that the Corporation had a duty to collect refuse. There were legal remedies available to pursue debt collection if people refused to pay the charges, but the Corporation was not entitled to fail to collect the waste, and thus purposely create a health hazard.

The High Court rejected Alderman O'Connell's case, but when that decision was appealed to the Supreme Court, it upheld his appeal. Justice Geoghegan and Justice Hardiman concurred that the Corporation was acting unlawfully in failing to collect the refuse on the basis of stickers. Justice Denham, in a minority judgement, held the opposite view that the corporation was not in breach of its statutory duty.

This Supreme Court decision is important because it appears to establish what any reasonable person might have believed, that the local authority, and in this case the Corporation, has an absolute obligation to protest the environment against health hazards, and thus to collect the refuse.

Local Cork campaigners, who since the imposition of the bin charges and the sticker system have been dumping their refuse on the steps of City Hall, ceased this action following the Supreme Court decision, since normal collections have resumed. Early last year, a number of protestors were jailed for non-payment of fines imposed on them as a result of their action to dispose of their refuse on the steps of City Hall. Do these protestors now have a case for compensation for unjust prosecution?

Furthermore, Justice Geoghegan upheld the view that the Alderman, who himself was exempt from the charges, had a public interest in ensuring that the Corporation was not acting unlawfully. This judgement raises an important question concerning the right of elected representatives in defence of what they see as the public interest to access the courts for redress.

Drogheda Challenge

Last month, a bombshell hit the courts. A civil action was taken by Drogheda Borough Council against a householder who allegedly failed to pay refuse charges in the year 2000. Presiding Judge Flann Brennan delayed the hearing when the defence questioned the validity of the legislation under which the Council was operating in collecting refuse charges.

The defence argued that the power of the County Manager to issue summonses for non payment was invalid, since the Act under which he held such powers had been abolished in later legislation between July and November 2001. Judge Brennan also questioned the right of the Drogheda Borough Council employee, Mary McCarthy, who has responsibility for collection of outstanding waste collection payments. Did Ms McCarthy have specific authorisation to act on behalf of the County Manager? It appeared that she did not.

All related cases due to be heard were subsequently adjourned and Judge Brennan delayed the hearing of this case until 19 March, when the issues raised are to be clarified.

Sinn Féin County Councillor Arthur Morgan, who has been to the fore on the council in contesting the manager's behaviour over waste, points out that "this case puts a further spanner in the works of local authority powers and responsibilities concerning waste disposal".

"Minister of the Environment Noel Dempsey was so keen to remove responsibility for waste management from the grasp of local authorities last year, when other elected representatives on our council began to take their responsibility to protect the environment seriously and oppose Dempsey's incinerator plans for local regions. Now it appears the manager is riding roughshod, as usual, over the rights of people in collecting waste charges in Drogheda without the legal authority.

"All credit is due to the people of Drogheda who are contesting waste charges, which the minister and county executive intend will be collected by private waste disposal companies and go to finance an incinerator which nobody wants, and which will poison our land and people for years to come."

Dublin prosecutions?

Meanwhile in Dublin, it is estimated that thousands of people are refusing to pay waste collection charges. Sinn Féin councillors have accused the executive of threatening and bullying people into payment of an illegitimate tax by issuing letters to householders threatening prosecution. "This is quite unacceptable," Councillor Dessie Ellis pointed out at a public meeting in Finglas last week over the charges.

"The delivery of two bins to householders is intended to be a sop to encourage people to pay a charge for a service which it is the council's responsibility to deliver to all, without additional charges, and without discrimination. The council cannot pretend that the new waste charges are payment for a serious waste recycling and recovery programme, when the key item in domestic waste, the rotting kitchen waste, is still lumped in with all other refuse, aside from tins and paper.

"If the Council had been serious about waste separation at source, they would have built capacity for composting kitchen waste, and would have ensured that capacity for recycling glass, paper and tins, was retained in local authority hands and not subject to the whims of private companies. No government or council can be serious about recycling if it is left to private companies to operate as they choose, at what price they dictate."

As if to prove the point, Ardagh Glass bottle company announced its decision to close last week. Now Repak is threatening that with the loss of Ardagh, recycled glass will most likely have to be sent abroad.

"It is scandalous. All this is happening because of the Fianna Fáil/PD coalition government's determination to privatise an essential service in our community, and to offload the costs of this service onto the householders through bin charges," said local Sinn Féin rep Daithi Doolan.

The hidden agenda

Dessie Ellis sums it up. "Authorities all over the country are attempting to enforce questionably legitimate payment for waste collection, only to hand it over, once established in law, to private collectors, like Oxygen. The private companies will then be free to escalate charges, subsume the service, without any regard to recycling, and dump all the waste into expensive incinerators around the country, which government intends to build in public-private partnerships. There will be no controlling waste charges then, and there will be no protection of the health of our children, or the pollution of our land and its produce. This is the government plan. It is unacceptable, and needs to be opposed every step of the way."