The government seems to have learned its lesson from the whole water charges mess.
Bin charges are set to be frozen while the government looks into claims that certain were looking to profit from new ‘pay by weight’ regulations.
Simon Coveney, the Minister for the Environment, met with waste management officials on Friday to discuss the new charges, due to come into effect on 1 July.
The government is now planning to cap charges for at least 12 months, meaning households will not be asked to pay more to get their waste collected until the summer of 2017 at the earliest.
Under the new terms, households will not pay more than they did in the last 12 months but a pay-by-weight scheme is still expected to be put in place, whereby customers could actually pay less than normal by recycling more.
“What we need is time to reassure people that this isn’t some sort of trick to increase charges or a privatisation agenda,” the minister told the Sunday Independent.
“This is just a better way of charging for waste that encourages people to recycle, reuse and compost their waste and rewards them financial for doing that.
“For at least a year we are going to cap charges to make sure no one feels they are being ripped off while hopefully lots of people see the opportunity and more people buy into it,” he added.
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