Dublin City Council urged to ‘press the reset button’ on bin bag ban
Over 300 people attended a public meeting expressing frustration at the planned bin bag ban in Stoneybatter last night.
Local Labour TD Marie Sherlock hosted the meeting at Scout Hall and said “the outcome is clear” and “ Dublin City Council must now press the reset button” on their planned removal of the waste collection service from the area. As part of the 3-Pillar Waste Management Strategy , households will be required to use wheelie bins or a stacked-caddie system, rather than the current pay-as-you-go bags.
The backlash from the local community has been significant, with TDs and councillors receiving hundreds of messages opposing the plan. While Ms Sherlock believes a bin bag ban could be crucial in the “fight to keep the streets cleaner,” she described the council’s implementation of the idea as “a botched effort”.
The first major criticism of the plan was the manner in which it was communicated to locals, who received letters from private waste collection providers informing them changes were incoming. Rather than properly consult those directly affected, Ms Sherlock previously told Dublin Live it was “just kind of foisted this upon them”.
“The dysfunctional waste system in Ireland means that all the power is with private bin companies to decide cost and where and when they collect,” Ms Sherlock explained. With many residents stating they simply do not have the space to store large wheelie bins or stacked caddies, she stressed the need to go “back to the drawing board” and consider some alternatives.
“Last night’s extraordinary attendance of our meeting reflects the significant anger from the community about the lack of consultation regarding the proposed ban on bin-bags. The reality is that these botched changes reflect the level of dysfunction when it comes to waste management in our city,” Ms Sherlock said.
“Instead of Dublin City Council taking ownership over alternatives and making the bin-bag ban workable, they have left it to private companies to bring the solutions. This is a complete abdication of responsibility towards residents across the north inner city.”
While some are entirely opposed to change and wish to retain the current plastic bin bag system, Ms Sherlock said she does believe the ban can be “made workable for local communities” if they rethink the current plan. “I’m conscious that there are many others who argue that they want to hold onto bags. Whatever people’s preference, the consensus is very clear: we need to have real engagement with communities on what is appropriate and possible,” she said.
She criticised the council for prioritising “for-profit waste management companies” in a situation where households will end up paying “dramatically greater amounts” in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. This means people will have “less incentive to reduce waste” and Ms Sherlock pointed out “a greater prospect of wheelie bins left on streets because people will simply not have the space to store them”. “We support any changes that will make our city cleaner, but they must be done right," she said.
Ms Sherlock described last night’s meeting as being about more than just “residents articulating their anger” and the council had a real opportunity to engage with the community to “bring innovative solutions to the table”. “Residents now demand that,” she said.
“There was a real will for solutions and engagement. There was also a clear recognition that at the heart of this issue is the diminishing power of local government and the dysfunction in how we manage waste in our city.”
In July, the Waste Management (Single Household Waste Collection Service) Bill 2026 will move to the second stage in the Dáil, which Ms Sherlock introduced in February. She said this provides a real opportunity to “transform waste” by putting the responsibility on landlords to ensure waste collection for their properties and introduce a single tender for management.
She said that the Bill represents “a step in the right direction towards the re-municipalisation of waste” since services were controversially privatised in 2012. “Dublin City Council must go back to the drawing board, engage with impacted communities, and come to the table with the much-needed transformative solutions to clean up our streets,” Ms Sherlock concluded.
At the Central Area Committee meeting in May, Executive Manager Derek Kelly defended the ban as a major component of the council’s plan to clean up the city and said the previous phases of their strategy has already removed approximately 20 tonnes of waste from the streets per month. He said the four waste providers in the area - Panda, Greyhound Recycle, KeyGreen, and Thorntons Recycling - have been working with the council to offer a variety of solutions to customers, which includes smaller, stacked plastic caddies to act as alternative to traditional wheelie bins.
Mr Kelly said that waste operators are providing an alternative for those without sufficient space through a stacked caddy system. He said they are around the size of one domestic waste bag and store around 45 litres worth of waste.
A caddie is around “the size of a shopping basket” according to Mr Kelly, with three stacked on top of another and approximately 1.2 metres high and around 400mm². Being around “the weight of a laptop,” he described them as a “light unit” that wouldn’t cause significant extra burden compared to a plastic bag.
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