Today is not budget day, but the legislation the Minister for the Environment and Local Government has introduced today will cost the average householder more than any single tax measure introduced on budget day in this House over the past ten years. I estimate from what the Minister has previously told us – I will deal with this later – that what this Bill will do is result in levels of household refuse charges of up to €700 per household per annum.
That measure is being brought in here under the cover of the Protection of the Environment Bill. It is being done in a way that is now becoming quite familiar. Last week when the Minister for Education and Science wanted to reintroduce fees he held up educational disadvantage like the political equivalent of a human shield to cover what he was trying to do. Today the Minister for the Environment and Local Government is doing exactly the same thing with the protection of the environment. Who after all can oppose the protection of the environment? Essentially this legislation which transposes the EU directive on licensing is being used here as political cover by the Minister to bring in by stealth an increased tax on the people. I do not believe there will be a great deal of controversy about this although Members may have some differences about some areas of detail in the Bill when we come to Committee Stage.
I want to deal with that in some detail because that will be done in three measures which are being introduced in the Bill. It will be done first, by the transfer of the power to make waste management plans and to levy waste charges from the elected members of local authorities to county managers, the making of that function an executive function rather than a reserved function; second, by giving the councils the power not to collect waste from somebody who has not paid; and, third, under the provisions of section 30 to which I will return.
The first question is the power to levy refuse charges being made an executive function? It is certainly an undemocratic measure. Elected members of local authorities have gradually in recent years been stripped of many of their functions. The two major functions which elected members of a local authority ended up being left with, in theory, were making of the county development plan and adopting the annual estimate for the local authority. The role of the elected members in making the county development plan has now been greatly undermined and eroded by the provisions of the Planning and Development Act 2000 and the way in which it is being interpreted by some county managers. The power that local authority members had to make and adopt the annual estimate for the local authority area is effectively being interfered with here by a measure which will give to the county manager the power to set and levy the charge for waste collection.
I could understand why the Minister would want to do that if a significant number of local authorities had failed to adopt their annual estimate as a result of an inability to adopt waste charges, but not a single local authority in any year since waste charges came in has failed to adopt an annual estimate by being unable to adopt a waste charge. Some may have come close to it or may have had a great deal of difficulty. There may have been a great deal of pain in some local authorities as members struggled between levying a charge, the threat of abolition by the Minister and the desirability of keeping a local authority in existence. The fact is that no local authority has failed to adopt an estimate as a result of the charge.
Why then is this being made an executive function? It cannot be argued that it is because of a failure on the part of the elected members of local authorities to carry out their statutory functions. The reason this measure is being introduced and the power to levy charges is being transferred from elected members to county managers is because the Minister wants these charges increased.
I cite a piece of evidence for that, namely, the Minister's comments to a meeting of the committee on the environment and local government some months ago. When questioned on this issue, he chastised local authorities for not levying refuse charges which met the full cost of the refuse service. When I asked him what his estimate was for those charges, he said it was €11 per collection. The average household with a black bin collection every week and a monthly collection of recyclable materials has a total of 64 collections a year which comes to €704 on the Minister's calculations.
That is what this measure is about – increasing charges for waste collection. The Minister knows it is highly unlikely that he would be able to persuade elected members of a local authority, even those from his side of the House, to go the distance and impose charges of about €700 per household for the collection of waste. That is why he is transferring the power to the county manager.
That is not all. Section 30 is very interesting. I will go through it in detail because there is bad news in this for the average householder. We need to strip away the camouflage the Minister has introduced about protecting the environment and expose what he is trying to do in the legislation. Section 30(1) states:
The operator of a landfill facility (other than an internal landfill facility), or such other facility for the disposal of waste as may be prescribed [and so on] shall impose charges in respect of the disposal of waste at the facility.
In other words, the operator of a waste disposal facility, regardless of whether it is a landfill or incinerator or whether the operator is private or a local authority, will be required to impose charges for the disposal of waste for that facility.
What order of charges will they be required to make under the Bill? According to section 30(3):
The amount or amounts of charges imposed . . . shall be such as the operator of the facility concerned determines is likely to ensure that the result specified in subsection (4) is achieved.
What is the result specified in subsection (4)? It reads:
(4) The result referred to . . . is that the aggregate of the amount of charges imposed by the operator, in relation to the facility concerned, during the relevant period will not be less than the amount that would meet the total of the following costs (irrespective of whether those costs, or any of them, have been or will be met from other financial measures available to the operator), namely—
(a)the costs incurred by the operator in the acquisition or development, or both (as the case may be), of the facility,
(b)the costs of operating the facility during the relevant period (including the costs of making any financial provision under section 53), and
(c)the estimated costs, during a period of not less than 30 years or such greater period as may be prescribed, of the closure, restoration, remediation or aftercare of the facility.
This places an obligation on the local authority or private company that has the incinerator or landfill to levy a charge which covers the full cost of buying the site, the capital cost of establishing the facility, the cost of running it and the cost of closure, remediation and management of the site for at least 30 years after the facility is closed.
The Minister said earlier that he wanted to be blunt. I would like to give him an opportunity of being so. I would like him to tell the House and the people what that cost will be. I believe he and his Department have modelled this for incinerators, landfill and other waste disposal facilities and have totted up the cost of buying the land, establishing the facility, conducting the different studies that must be done in advance, the cost of running the facility and the cost of remediation for 30 years after it has closed. That is a large cost and we need to know what it is. The Bill is transferring that, lock, stock and barrel, to householders, and without taking account of State funding or any subsidy that might be received because the legislation explicitly states that the costs must be met irrespective of whether any of them have been or will be met from other financial measures available to the operator.
Many householders, to be fair, understand in light of the polluter pays principle, that a cost is associated with having their waste collected, whether it is €150 in some areas, €250 or even close to €300, as it is in my local authority area. They understand that and are prepared to contribute to it. What they need to understand now is that we are not talking about charges of the order of €150, €200 or €300 a year for the collection and disposal of refuse but about substantial household charges. The reason the legislation is before us and this power is being transferred to county managers is to facilitate the increase in those charges.
For those communities, and there are many, concerned about the health implications of incineration, and Deputy Allen referred to the report in the British Medical Journal which will be disturbing reading for many people in localities where it is proposed to locate incinerators, the Minister will not only impose incinerators on them, he will add cost to the injury. Not only will they have to endure incinerators under the Minister's policy, they will also have to bear the cost of them as well if it is to such facilities their waste is eventually transported.
The Minister seeks to justify all this by relying on the polluter pays principle. His understanding of the principle and the way he has used it is a distortion. His definition of a polluter is that everyone is a polluter. We all are in some way. However, no attempt is made to attribute proportionate responsibility for pollution between householders and the original producers of the waste in the first place. The legislation is not making the polluter pay but making householders pay for the entire cost of the operation of waste disposal facilities. While many householders are quite happy to pay a proportional contribution to this, to introduce a system where they pay the full cost is quite disproportionate. In any event, it ignores the fact that the average householder has no choice regarding domestic waste. The average householder has no control over the way in which groceries and household goods are presented and packaged or the amount of waste they contain.
The assumption underpinning "the polluter pays" principle is that there is an available alternative. The concept of using a charge or environment tax that causes people to change their behaviour is something I support. While the Minister's predecessor has not had many complimentary things said about him recently, he successfully introduced such a tax in the form of the tax on plastic bags. This succeeded in changing the environmental behaviour of people and I acknowledge that it was successful. The way in which charges on waste are imposed here, where everything is charged for, does not encourage a change in environmental behaviour.