THE FOUR Dublin local authorities have begun action against Greyhound Recycling for its failure to collect green bins from householders across the Dublin region last month.
Dublin City Council served the company with a “performance failure notice” on behalf of the four local authorities late last week for not fulfilling the service requirements in the contract they won from rival waste company Oxygen more than a year ago.
Greyhound now faces fines in relation to each household where its collection commitments were not met last January. Some homes were left without a collection for more than a month.
Greyhound, in January 2009, took over the contract to collect dry recyclable waste from 360,000 homes across the Dublin region for a three-year period. There were problems initially with collections, but these were attributed to a failure by the previous contractors, Oxygen, to collect bins coming up to Christmas.
In a report to councillors yesterday Dublin City Council said there were ongoing issues with Greyhound collections in certain areas throughout 2009. However, it said the service “disimproved dramatically” in January 2010.
The council subsequently served the performance failure notice and is awaiting a response from the company. Fingal, Dún Laoghaire/Rathdown and South Dublin county council’s all confirmed yesterday that there have been problems with the Greyhound collections in their areas.
In a statement yesterday Greyhound said its service schedule was disrupted by weather conditions which were “the worst that the country has experienced in 50 years”.
Customers were notified of delays and rescheduled collection through the green bin website and through the media, it said.
Greyhound was a founder member of the Irish Waste Management Association (IWMA) which is opposed to the council’s Poolbeg incinerator.
