Council warning over €3.2m refuse debt
The warning was issued by a senior council official who said a get-tough policy was about to be adopted by the cash-strapped authority to recover the money.
All the arrears are pre-Sept 2010. Prior to that, the council had provided a refuse collection service to about 35,000 households.
However, it decided to opt out of the business due to stiff competition from the private sector and the fact the Government had advised local authorities to impose VAT on bills — which would also have added to the service’s uncompetitiveness.
Assistant county manager Declan Daly said that in Sept 2010 the council decided to sell the business to Country Clean. The council had only managed to collect €100,000 in bills it was owed prior to that time. He said €3.2m was still outstanding and badly needed by the council.
“In the first instance, we were trying to make sure there was a smooth transition from the local authority to Country Clean. Now we need to get ourselves into gear and collect the money that is owed to us.
“We will be appointing a special internal team to deal with this. In previous years, we used debt collectors to get the money owed to us but they went out of business.”
Initially, he said, the council would advise, by letter, the 13,000-plus people who still owe the money. If there is no response, they will conduct a follow-up with phonecalls to the defaulters.
If that doesn’t elicit a positive response, then the council “will issue legal proceedings” to recoup the money.
“We may also go back to using debt collectors to collect some of the money,” said Mr Daly.
The assistant county manager said it was his aim to try and recoup most of the money owed within the next six months.
However, he acknowledged that it could take much longer if legal proceedings were entered into.
Cllr Deirdre Forde (FG) said she was astonished how much money was still owed by refuse bill defaulters and maintained she and her 47 colleagues on the local authority had not been made aware of the outstanding debt.
“They [council officials] should never have let it get to that stage. I think they will find it very hard to recoup all the money now because the recession is biting even harder and a lot of people simply haven’t got the ability to pay the bills,” said Cllr Forde.
“If you ran a business you would never let debts mount up so much.”
Cllr Forde said she would raise the issue at the next full meeting of the county council and seek a breakdown of how long some people were let get away without paying their bills.
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