A MAN who refused to pay €241 domestic waste-collection charges, on the grounds that Dublin City Council was obliged to implement charges on a pay-by-weight basis in accordance with the “polluter pays principle”, has lost a Supreme Court challenge to a District Court order requiring him to pay up.
While rejecting George Williams’s case on the grounds that the District Court did not have jurisdiction to consider the legality of the council’s 2001 decision fixing the charges, the Supreme Court also made clear that this and the other issues raised related to the “polluter-pays principle” could still be litigated in appropriate proceedings.
Mr Williams, Rutland Grove, Crumlin, Dublin, was prosecuted before the District Court after refusing to pay waste charges in 2001 and 2002.
He claimed that in its 2001 decision imposing the charges, the council was required to establish, under the objectives of the waste-management plan for the Dublin region relating to the polluter pays principle, a “pay-by-weight” charge within its area.
He claimed the charges were made without regard to the 1998 waste-management plan for Dublin which stated that it “is firmly grounded in the polluter-pays principle in terms of costs recovery”.
In 2004, the District Court ordered him to pay charges of €241.26, plus costs and witness expenses. Legal issues arising from the case were referred to the higher courts.
Yesterday, Mr Justice Hugh Geoghegan, with whom Mrs Justice Susan Denham and Mr Justice Adrian Hardiman agreed, ruled that the points raised by Mr Williams could not properly be raised in the District Court by way of defence to a claim for a civil debt of a public nature.
The claim for the charges arose under the local government code, not under any special provisions relating to waste management, and the District Court could not carry out an elaborate investigation of the proportionality applied by the council in achieving a polluter-pays principle in their waste collection policy, he said.
Since there was no clear legally defined process by which the polluter-pays principle was to be implemented, there was no defence to the action to recover the charges once those charges were fixed by the county manager under the general local government code.
On that basis, the District Court did not have jurisdiction to consider Mr Williams’s challenge to the legality of the council’s 2001 resolution fixing the charges, he said.