Bin row turns ugly

THE bin tax row turned ugly yesterday when a protester was knocked down and almost 50,000 households were left without waste collections.

The country’s largest trade union, SIPTU, last night called on local authorities to refrain from confrontation after bin collectors were temporarily laid off when they defied orders to face down protesters so that a High Court injunction could be enforced.

South Dublin County Council followed up the threat to their staff by warning they were considering sacking all of them and privatising waste collection for its 75,000 householders.

SIPTU president Jack O’Connor said last night it was “grossly unfair” for bin workers and their unions to be “sandwiched between the two sides” by either party in the dispute.

“Injunctions are not the way of dealing with this. They are an over-reaction which exacerbate tensions. We are calling on the local authorities to devise a way of providing their services without recourse to confrontation, injunctions and imprisonment,” he said.

His comments came after protesters picketed seven council depots across Dublin city and council, blocking bin trucks from leaving and preventing collections from 50,000 households.

Gardaí and Dublin City Council are conducting separate investigations following an incident at one of the protests where a campaigner came within inches of death when he was carried on the bonnet of an emerging lorry towards oncoming traffic.

Joe Mooney, chairman of the East Wall Residents’ Association, was taken to hospital by ambulance following the incident at the Fingal depot which left him cut, bruised and shaken.

“We saw a lorry coming out the yard and we knew it was not a bin lorry so we had no intention of preventing it leaving,” said the 35-year-old father of two, who was recovering at home last night.

“But before we knew what was happening the driver of the lorry came at us. He kept moving forward, getting faster and faster. There were people on either side of me, I was in the middle and I could not get out of the lorry’s path.

“As he accelerated onto the main road I had no choice but to grab onto either part of the windshield or the top of the bonnet, and get my legs clear of the roadway. It’s all a bit hazy, but I was trying not to fall under the lorry.”

A spokeswoman for Dublin City Council said the council regretted the incident but added: “Unfortunately people have chosen to put themselves in the way of danger around moving vehicles.”

Protesters have pledged to picket bin depots throughout greater Dublin again today.