COSTLY private sector bin charges are a significant factor in illegal dumping and overflowing bins in parts of the city, it has been warned.

City Councillor Henry Cremin has called on the council to increase bin collections in the Lee Fields, in particular, claiming that household rubbish is regularly dumped there.

Environment officials at City Hall have said they will consider making changes at the amenity in a bid to combat the dumping, including moving the bins away from the car park to make it more difficult for people to discard waste.

Valerie O’Sullivan, head of environment at City Hall, said: “People are going to the Lee Fields and putting household waste into bins, which is causing the overflow at weekends. The suggestion to move the bins away from the car park might be useful, we will take a look at it.”

Mr Cremin said that overflowing bins are ‘disgusting’ and ‘a complete eyesore to the public who use this amenity and this does not sell our city to the tourists’.

“On Saturdays and Sundays this summer, it was a turnoff. That is bad enough for locals but even worse for tourists,” Mr Cremin said.

“The council said they have increased collections from two days to three days, which is fair enough but I have huge problems with it at the weekends. It is awful to go down there on a Sunday morning and see rubbish all over the place and at the side of the bins.”

Mr Cremin said this was a problem he and his party colleagues predicted when bin collections were privatised. “The council said that possibly 50% to 60% of what they empty out of those bins is actually domestic refuse, which is a huge problem,” he said.

“The two bins in particular that are always overflowing are the ones that are near the car park on the Carrigrohane Road, which tells me that people are getting out of their cars with their rubbish and dumping it into the bins.

“We flagged this years ago when the refuse collections were taken over by private companies. We said that all this was going to happen down the road. It is at the side of the road and it is in our bins.

“Long ago we paid our bins in our rent or whatever the case may be, when the council had it. But when it was privatised there are so many various operators and the prices are not cheap.

“To be quite truthful, if you have someone on a low budget, they have problems trying to get someone to collect their rubbish, they basically can’t afford it.”