LETTER FROM CITY MANAGER DATED 17-2-12
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Dear Councillor,
There continues to be huge media attention given to the bin issue. However there are a number of facts that you should be made aware of at this stage. Based on the presentation rates and tonnage collected by Greyhound in the 3rd and 4th week of their service, it appears that the vast majority of customers are now aware of the revised collection dates and are availing of the service.
There continues to be some isolated reports to the Council of individual houses and, in some cases, roads, being missed. In the main, these are still relating to areas that were served by black bag and green bin service. In each case we have made immediate contact with Greyhound in order to arrange for collection. They have had a number of additional crews and vehicles available for this particular purpose for the first weeks of the service and have, generally, responded quickly to our calls. We continue to have a number of staff in direct contact with Greyhound as part of the hand over process and this will continue for as long as necessary.
As of Monday last 13th February 2012 Greyhound indicated that there was circa 18,000 customers who had not signed up for the service. Up to Thursday evening 16th February 2012, a total of 4,700 of these customers had made contact with Greyhound and had signed up for the service. This leaves a balance of 13,300 and it is expected that more customers who have yet to finalise arrangements will sign up with Greyhound in the coming days. There are also customers who put bins out very infrequently who will not decide to sign up until they wish to use the service. It is also expected that a number of the customers will have made or will make arrangements with alternative service providers.
It should be noted that over the last number of years, when the City Council was providing the collection, in the region of 8,000 to 12,000 customers would have been pursued for non payment of quarterly charges and indeed placed on a black list for collection purposes. Generally these customers subsequently either made payment in full or made acceptable arrangements for payment and had their service restored. The non-payers when we provided the service were spread across the city and over different collection days. Greyhound report that this situation also pertains at present. So when non-collection is implemented it will be spread across the city and spread over five days.
There have been media reports that the number of black bags and tonnages of dumped waste has jumped dramatically in recent days. This is not the case. In any year the City Council between street sweepings and dumped bags would collect approximately 13,000 tonnes or approximately 36 tonnes of waste per day based on a seven day week. There has been no increase in this figure since Greyhound took over. In fact the figure has been lower for dumped bags recently because Greyhound have collected the vast bulk of untagged waste. This will obviously revert closer to the norm as they cease to collect untagged bags.
As service is withdrawn to non-payers we will carry out our duties under the litter pollution act i.e. preventing health hazards arising from dumping as we always did and pursuing people who resort to this behaviour. Separately under the Waste Management Acts we will be checking with householders who do not have a collection as to how they dispose of their waste.
I know there are still problems but there is also a lot of misinformation. I hope this update is of assistance to you. If there is any detail you wish to check please contact Damian Drumm Executive Manager on 01 2222392.
Yours sincerely
John Tierney
Dublin City Manager
