A call has been made to make it mandatory that every tenant of Laois County Council should have a waste bin.
Fine Gael Councillor Aisling Moran brought the matter forward at a recent meeting of Laois County Council.
She says that tenants of the Council should have to pay for a bin service in order to curb illegal dumping.
Cllr Moran also extended her idea out to private renters and suggested that the landlords should be made liable to ensure that homes they went have a bin service included in the rental agreement.
She said: “There is a solution here. If there are bins at every property people won’t need to dump.
“Whether the council charges them or the tenant pays, for bins to be there.
“If it’s at their back door, they definitely won’t be gathering it up and throwing it out on a Sunday afternoon.”
However, according to Director of Services Simon Walton, it is not in the power of Laois County Council to enact such a law.
He said that an arrangement like that would have to be laid down by the government.
Mr Walton said: “You’ve made notices of motion before as regards bins outside every property but again that comes back to the national legislation.
“It is something we would be open to provided it’s put into place.
“We had significant door to door inspections requiring people to show us evidence as to how they were disposing of their household waste.
“Obviously those services were significantly interrupted over the pandemic but now are coming back.
“There are inspections ongoing particularly where we have indications that some households do not have a bona fides waste disposal system in place for their properties.”
Cllr Moran asked that a letter be sent to the relevant government department.
She said: “We’re spending hundreds of thousands of euros every year on rubbish, picking up other people’s rubbish.”
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