Council Should Administer Waste Waiver Scheme, says de Burca

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Council Should Administer Waste Waiver Scheme, says de Burca

Tuesday, May 15 2007

Green Party General Election candidate, Deirdre de Burca, strongly rejected a recent proposal by Wicklow County Council that voluntary groups should administer a Waste Waiver Scheme in the county.She described the proposal as “unworkable” and “unfair”.

Wicklow County Council’s Finance Committee recommended that the 100,000 euros set aside for a Waste Waiver Scheme in Wicklow County Council’s last two budgets be administered by community and voluntary groups within the county. Other councillors defended the proposal by arguing that if the council administered the scheme, approximately 50% of the money available would be taken up with staff and administration costs.

Cllr de Burca said that it was the opinion of the Green Party that the scheme should be administered by the council. She said that local community groups do not have the staff or the resources to administer a Waste Waiver Scheme where thousands of applications will have to be processed and eligibility decided. “Effectively the council is trying to off-load yet another of its functions to community and voluntary groups” says de Burca. “Already Tidy Towns Committees are doing much of the clean-up and maintenance of outdoor areas around the county that the council should really be doing. One has to ask what responsibilities the council will eventually have if it continues to privatise and ‘outsource’ its traditional areas of responsibility”?

De Burca says that the council has also argued that it should not introduce a Waiver Scheme that would favour one private waste collection company over another. “For example in Bray we provide people who avail of the Waiver Scheme with free bags from one of the major waste collectors, which is not fair now that there are several competing companies in the county” says de Burca. However, she points out that this problem could be avoided by providing people on the Waiver Scheme with vouchers which would entitle them to shop around and choose the waste collection company that suited them.

“I am extremely disappointed that Wicklow County Council is restricting the proposed Waiver Scheme to elderly people” she says. “While the elderly badly need this scheme, so too do low income families, particularly large families” she says.” At the moment there is no consistency between Town Councils in the county- some do provide waste waiver schemes while others do not. This is not acceptable”.

De Burca says that the Green Party favours the establishment of a National Waiver Scheme that would be administered as part of the Social Welfare payment system.

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