Consumer representatives and anti bin-tax campaigners reacted angrily to news that refuse charges in Dublin are to rise by at least 23 per cent next year.
Following a meeting of Dublin City Council on Monday, councillors voted by a margin of just one vote to accept its budget for 2004.
As a result, charges for a 240-litre bin in the city will increase from €154 to €195, while the cost of a 140-litre bin will rise to €110 from €90.
Last night, the Dublin city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, confirmed the council was moving towards a service charge of approximately €350 for those residents in Dublin who use their bins every week of the year.
This would be on a par with charges around the country, he said, and would be introduced as a way of making the service pay for itself. A firm commitment, he said, had been given that a "pay-by-volume" charge would be in place by 2005.
The chief executive of the Consumers Association of Ireland, Mr Dermott Jewell, said yesterday that while most consumers might understand the need to increase the charges, the question of how they would be able to afford such a significant increase "seems to have been missed".
"There are going to have to be serious efforts made to assist people in paying this," he said. "I also think we'll see the re-emergence of illegal dumping."
A spokeswoman for the Dublin Campaign Against the Bin Tax said she was not surprised by the charge's rise.
"We always predicted that it was not going to stay static, but would increase," she said. "But it will just increase the determination of people not to pay it."
Meanwhile, the Green Party, which voted in favour of the budget, despite previously warning that it might vote against it, yesterday said that it had received firm assurances from Mr Fitzgerald, prior to voting on the issue, that its initiatives for waste management would be adopted.
These include the introduction of a tagging system for waste, and the roll-out of a green recycling service in inner-city homes, although it is believed that at least some of these plans had already been agreed to.