Deposit return scheme (recycling) - Part 2

Packaging needs to be reduced at source.

That's not bad, I do believe you because it's a common enough fact that charges vary widely across the country, bit of an eircode lottery in many respects. I get invoiced for 6 months of service and I'm paying it off with €30-€35ish a month payments

It certainly is, but that overhaul should have happened before the introduction of our DRS to make it somewhat more palatable and affordable to the people.

DRS won't be as costly when it gets introduced in Spain, for example, because their current waste collection system isn't based on a for-profit system.

It doesn't matter how much the deposit is, it still won't be as costly as our scheme because they don't have a privatised for-profit waste collection system so the Spanish householders won't be footing the bill like we are here

Chances are the income from recycling the containers will be part of the same funds currently used for the regular collections

I don't have the hard figures, but whenever I look at the situation in other countries, I usually find that the local charges are much much higher than our combined property tax and bin charges for the average customer. The advantage of the Irish system is that unlike many of our EU neighbours, those who create more waste in Ireland, pay more.

Average council tax in South East England is about £2k/year. For that you are getting your education needs paid for including books, uniforms, and stationary right up to (but not inclusive of) university level, social care, roads in the area, the police and crime commissioner, the fire and rescue services, waste collection, planning, and environmental health so it's not really comparing like-with-like

The "create more waste = pay more" argument is also not overly true. There's a small number of bin operators that use a proper pay-by-weight system, Mr Binman in Limerick and Tipperary is the only one that comes to mind but I assume there are others, but most are fixed price. This means in the majority of cases you get charged the same regardless of how much waste you produce

The DRS is, in theory, a create more = pay more system but most people are paying more now for their wheelie-bin collection even if they return 100% of their drinks containers which cancels out a lot of the supposed good

I'm a bit too young to remember, but if the councils had kept up the bin charges instead of privatising them the prices likely would be unaffected by the DRS

It wouldn't because the money made from re-turn recycling could have been used to offset the losses from the councils as it's all public money. If anything, because the returned material is of a higher quality they would get better bang for their buck and could have created a situation where council bin charges get lowered if they were so inclined

Obviously this can't happen with private companies

Both would be publicly provided services. By your logic the money collected from one public service can't be used to subsidise another which is something that happens all the time

That's how it works at the moment, yes, and as you can see it doesn't work very well. Hopefully a reform is coming but I wouldn't hold my breath

Seriously, where are all these people with trolley loads of cans and bottles coming out of? They can't all be publicans and restaurant owners! And some of them aren't even overweight from fizzy drinks.

Any of litter picking / bin rifling / Tidy Towns / sports clubs / places with donations bins.

I don't think you read the link I provided. It clearly states:

"The Council is also responsible for schools and other educational services for children but these are paid for through the Dedicated Schools Grant. This is a grant from the Government and does not fall on the Council Tax."

You previously claimed that:

"Average council tax in South East England is about £2k/year. For that you are getting your education needs paid for including books, uniforms, and stationary right up to (but not inclusive of) university level,"

That is simply not true.

They collect them over time. Like a few months.