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DUBLIN CITY COUNCIL (DCC) is slowly drawing closer to regaining control of the city’s domestic waste collection, with a cross-party Oireachtas working group set up to explore the matter today.
DCC councillors met with TDs, Senators and trade union representatives today in what turned out to be a successful attempt at rallying support for their plans to re-enter the market for domestic waste collection.
A number of councillors, led by Sinn Féin’s Daithí Doolan, have long fought to regain control of Dublin city’s waste collection services but have been met with various road blocks over the years.
Today, they received the support of a number of TDs and Senators, with a cross-party working group set up to research the remunicipalisation of the service, draft legislation and guide it through the Oireachtas.
The need for legislation on the matter was established after an independent report by the Institute of Public Administration warned that there could be major legal challenges from existing private refuse collection companies without laws being in place.
Speaking to The Journal, Cllr. Doolan said that his preference would be for DCC to manage refuse collection directly or for a regional operation to be put in place under the four local authorities.
“What happens in Dublin is unique. Globally, there is nowhere else in the world where the waste management process is as chaotic as it is here,” Doolan said.
He added that Dublin is the “Wild West of Europe” when it comes to waste collection.
The cross-party working group set up today included Labour senator Marie Sherlock, Fianna Fáil TD Paul McAuliffe, Independent TD Joan Collins and Sinn Féin TD Darren O’Rourke.
“I’m personally of the view that this isn’t just about the bins. This is a bigger conversation about how we manage waste within our communities,” Marie Sherlock told The Journal.
“Local Authorities should be providing waste collection services. It’s composting, recycling, and of course the black bin waste as well.
“Ideally we want the local authority to ultimately have responsibility for how these services are provided in their area.
“We don’t necessarily need to reinvent the wheel here. There are brilliant examples in many European cities of how they manage waste,” Sherlock added.
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The rates are going back up but the level of service and overall standard of the hotels have gotten worse
yes especially if you are using a pigsback voucher!
That’s impressive
No doubt NAMA hotels probably loose €10,000 per room.
As a regular hotel user, prices are going up, service is going down, hoteliers are their own words enemy.
I would partially agree with you regarding hotels in Dublin City Centre. I don’t blame the staff though. The work most hotels make their staff do, along with the lengthy shifts are questionably legal at best.
In my opinion, many Dublin City Centre hotels are actually damaging the industry with their extortionate prices. Tourists may stay once, but they wont return at those costs!
10000 profit per room and most staff on min wage with little or no rights And as a long suffering hotel worker belive me thats true in most hotels
Sure look at the Callaghan hotel group that tried to force some of their foreign national workers to sign up for a cut in their minimum wage telling them they couldn’t afford to pay them but at same time were spending 10,000 euro a day in the high court trying to stop unions from stopping them… Some evil folk out there that’s for sure.
Sure half the hotels in dublin are owned by banks so no guesses were all the profits are gone into the pokets of the people who caused this in the first place
Hotel workers should join a union.
Dave, what purpose will that serve? A union can only do anything in the public sector and and even at that they do very very little. Unions have long forgotten their purpose and should be abandoned by every single worker in the public sector. Appoint people amongst yourselves to represent you and save yourself the money of funding the most ludicrous organisations in the country.
The argument is simple, they shd say, we took pay cuts, pay freezes etc when the hotels were in trouble.
Now they are making sky high profits and we want everything that was taken from us back + more.
Yeah the top of most unions are tied to the labour party etc, but I’m not sure about going it alone, it makes a big difference to have a union organiser talk to workers, rather than just starting from scratch.
Anyhow now a days you can join a union online, get your workmates to join the same one (in secret), and get a union organiser to meet them somewhere and take it from there.
exactly, and not just Hotels, they’d go about telling you then “ah business is slack, we’re very quiet, tourist trade is down” and so and so forth. Old Old excuses, total lies. They’ve been playing that card now for 5 years in order to cut wages, staff and feed their greedy mouths.
spot on Ashley, they’re ALL corrupt, right down the line
90% of hotels aren’t making any money, fact.
I could name 10 hotels that people think are “flying” but all with net worth of -€5m, there is no comeback from that, they only showed retained profits of €150k max even during the good times.
Hotels that have valued their assets upwards of €30 million but are worth nothing in today’s market, maybe 5-7m at a huge push.
Anyone with access to CRO figures for hotels will know what I’m on about.
Big hotels with golf clubs that are loosing 500-700k per year but the banks are not willing to move in as it will cost that to maintain the properties per year with the golf courses.
I dislike the idea of the average hotel price included! A separate weekend/weekday average would be needed as I know that the average prices listed above for Dublin are certainly not indicative of an average weekend room rate!
Also to add they now use the per person per room trick rather than room rate.
That’s the end of the recession so, we’ve turned the corner, spread the news
Quick everybody get a second car and a huge mortage we on d mend ha
The editor of the Indo’s property pages just got a semi.
I thought he was detached.
no no, we’re still in recession, we need to cut wages more and more, we still need that excuse to line our pockets, it’s our only hope cos we’re greedy :/
Dublin Dublin Dublin… Yawn.. That big green space West of the m50 will soon be called outer space the way this country is going….
Hotels in fields are you suggesting? I’m confused!
The European presidency filled many hotel rooms, it was a one off ! This should be a warning, next year the figures won’t look so good.
You’re hoping aren’t you?
Not that many, sorry to disappoint.
The EU presidency was in 2013 – this survey was taken in 2012.
That’s great news hopefully the rest of the industry picks up to
Articles like this have the potential to be quite damaging to the hotel industry! It’s not so black and white people!
No surprise there still being ripped off
good news though, keep it coming, its greedy stories like this that tell us all NOT to book a hotel room cos we know their workers are underpaid.
My above point is now proven!
have your say