No Payment No Bin Collection

The Council announced a decision last November to move to a ‘Pay-By-Volume (Tag-a-Bin) system of bin charge for its refuse collection service in 2004.

The method of payment rewards those who are prepared to recycle more of their waste while being less expensive in that they only pay each time the grey bins is put out for collection. The tag costs €6 for a standard size bin (or €3 for a small bin). For those who put the bin out once every 2 weeks this represents an annual charge of €144 for 2004 as against €190 for 2003. Greater reductions apply if the bin is put out less frequently.

In addition the month of January was free for those who cleared their arrears by 31.12.03 or who had entered into an agreement with the Council to pay arrears by instalments before that date.

Authorisation Labels have already been issued to all compliant householders.

The Green bin will continue to be collected without the need for a Tag or a label.

Those who are not up-to-date with payments have been reminded several times of the need to make payment of the charge and have been notified on two occasions in the last 6/7 weeks of the need to pay their arrears or make an instalment payment agreement with the Council before to-day MONDAY 2^ND FEBRUARY 2004 when the Tag-a-Bin system commenced. They have also been warned that failure to do so would result in the loss of their bin service. These warnings resulted in some 8,000 householders making payments since the notices issued.

In fairness to all those householders who have made payment and who are compliant, it follows that those who have failed to comply will lose the collection service.

The Council is aware that a number of calls were lost last week due to overloading of the switchboard. We are trying to prevent a recurrence of that problem by making available several additional telephone lines from today.