Fingal County Council has accused bin-charge protesters of using intimidatory tactics and verbal abuse in their attempts to disrupt the council's refuse collection service.
A spokeswoman for the council said bin-collectors and residents who had paid their charges suffered abuse from protesters in west Dublin yesterday in a campaign that had "turned nasty". "Not only were our workers verbally assaulted and shouted at, but residents who had paid and tried to take their bins to be collected were intimidated. People are starting to get very nervous."
While the workers had achieved 100 per cent service in Sutton and Malahide, they were forced to abandon the Warrenstown and Mulhuddart routes with very few bins collected.
The Socialist TD Mr Joe Higgins said the council's accusations were outrageous. "This whole campaign has been marked by a peaceful, good-natured attitude to everybody, especially the council workers. The gardaí would have got involved if people had been misbehaving themselves," he said.
Mr Higgins is the main spokesman for the Socialist Party-led campaign which has seen Dublin refuse collections disrupted for almost a week. The protests, which began last Wednesday when Fingal County Council stopped collecting bins from householders who had not paid their waste charge, have now spread to Dublin City Council.
