Minister for the Environment Denis Naughten has confirmed that he is deferring the January 1 date for the mandatory introduction of ‘dual pricing’ for household waste management, and the ‘opt-in’ pay-per-kilogramme charges.
The Minister said it does not make sense to require waste collectors, from January 1, to offer dual pricing or opt-ins for the pay-per-kilogramme scheme, which would have been mandatory under the previous proposal.
“The review with industry representatives and regulatory authorities is continuing, which is exploring a more flexible framework of pay-by-weight pricing structures for householders, which will incentivise people to reduce and separate their waste and will enable the collectors to provide more options to help households manage their waste costs,” said Minister Naughten.
Under dual pricing, it was intended that waste collectors would provide customers with their bill under their existing price plan, and also provide a comparative bill so that customers could see what they would be paying under a pay-per-kilogramme price.
Work on the review is ongoing and the agreement with industry representatives is still in place so that, in the meantime, customers will pay no more for the same level of service than they were paying for waste collection before last summer.
