Survey's Main Findings

The responses of local authorities to the Ombudsman questionnaire reveal that:

• four (17%) of the 23 local authorities surveyed provide a waste collection service to all their households. All are urban based.
• private operators provide a waste collection service exclusively in eight (35%) of local authorities surveyed. All except one are rural based  - see Table 1 at Appendix 2;
• there is a wide gap between the lowest (192) and the highest charge (516) for waste collection services; local authority annual service charges range from  €192 to €516 and private service charges range from €200 to €450. - see section 6.2;
• private operators provide no relief by way of a waiver of charges to low-income households;  (*As from 2007 one local authority provides a partial waiver to customers of private operators, and one arranges collection by a private contractor for a limited number of low-income households - see Section 7.3);
• seven (35%) of the local authorities surveyed provided no waiver of charges to any household in 2006 because the waste collection service was provided exclusively by private operators - see Table 2 at Appendix 3;
• in an area where the service is provided by both a private operator and the local authority, only those whose waste is collected by, or on behalf of, the local authority have access to a waiver scheme, apart from those referred to at * above;
• there is a wide variety of waiver schemes among local authorities and within one county there are three different waiver schemes in operation - see Table 3 at Appendix 5;
• the criteria used to decide which households qualify for a waiver are different in each local authority - see Chapter 8;
• where operative, different qualifying criteria and different types and amounts of reductions in waivers apply.  The average value of a waiver ranged from €40 to €357 -  see Section 7.1;
• the annual cost in 2006 of implementing a waiver scheme ranged from €30,000 to €7.8m  - see Section 7.3;
• only three of the authorities surveyed recover the costs of the waiver scheme by increasing charges to other users of the waste collection service;
• most local authorities cover the costs of the waiver scheme by using funds from other sources, e.g. rates and revenue receipts;
• of the eight areas where the service is provided exclusively by a private operator, seven are in rural areas. Where the service is provided by both (LA and private), the majority are in rural areas - see Table 1 at Appendix 2.