Septic tank charges

mistermouse wrote: »

A little off point, but

Rural Gombeen politicians helped get us into the financial mess also and rural dwellers may find themselves being penalised now for poor planning and the costs racked up by politicians they voted in for years for pet project

Welease wrote: »

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Welease wrote: »

Well that proves my point about the use of terms like Urban and Rural

Scofflaw's point is that Urban refers only to the 4 major cities (I'm assume Dublin, Belfast, Cork and Galway?)

So you list one outside the state and then skip the 3rd city of this state completely ?

Strange assumption.

Swap Belfast for Limerick.. no biggie.. completely irrelevant to the point, but thats for taking the time to chip in...

I can only imagine the laugh I'd get if I'd left out Dublin making a similar claim.

But re relevance - if the inspectors do the same as you and Google Maps and overlook us, I'll be happy out.

Scofflaw wrote: »

Liam Byrne wrote: »

Equivalent to the people paying for installation of their own septic tanks, which no-one has objected to.

The issue - we're being told - is ongoing inspection and maintenance to ensure that it's not polluting.

Which is something the urban areas fund for urban sewage systems out of the commercial rates paid by urban businesses.

cordially,
Scofflaw

If you like, though, you can pay my Dublin commercial rates, and I'll pay your septic tank charge and your rural commercial rates on an equivalently sized premises. I'll profit by the deal, I can guarantee.

Tipp Man wrote: »

The evidence is completly flawed as it takes no account of resources coming from rural areas without payment into urban areas or head offices whose main activities take place outside the urban area

And this breakdown of urban/rural is pure bull anyway. Glanbia for instance gets its resources from rural areas of most counties in Leinster and Munster but the profits it makes are reported as Kilkenny. Do you class Kilkenny city as an urban or rural area? does it matter if you are inside or outside the ringroad in Kilkenny to be classed as urban or rural? What about the huge profits that Glanbia makes on its foreign operations which have practically nothing to do with urban or rural Ireland?

that table provided earlier isn't worth the pixels it was written on quite frankly and proves practically nothing as it is an incomplete record of the movement of resources

Scofflaw wrote: »

No, there's no new costs associated with the inspections of sewage systems generally, because they've been inspected all along. The septic tank inspections, on the other hand, are entirely new - that is, they haven't been done before (except in Cavan).

In turn, that generates a new charge on the local authorities, who have to find that money somewhere. They could:

(a) raise their commercial rates,
(b) use the household charge,
(c) get more money from central government
(d) charge directly for septic tank registration

Of those:

(a) is difficult, because rural areas areas are the ones with septic tanks, while urban areas are the ones with businesses
(b) the household charge appears to be already earmarked for other things
(c) the central government doesn't have any spare money
(d) generates a lot of whinging

Now, of those options, (b) and (d) are obviously the most sensible, and (d) is obviously the fairer of the two.

As to the commercial rates - mine have gone up another €300 this year to €1500 on a relatively small office, so I find the brughaha over a €50 septic tank registration fee rather laughable. Commercial rates are currently what pays for local authority spending, but I doubt commercial rates in your local authority area are anything like mine. I'd obviously welcome a return of domestic rates if it meant commercial rates went down, because overall I'd likely gain.

cordially,
Scofflaw

Scofflaw wrote: »

They're demanding a rates increase to make up the shortfall from developer levies, primarily. Whether we want to make up that shortfall is a question of what council services we'd like to see cut. Because there's a pretty direct relationship between paying local authorities and getting local authority services.

In the case of the septic tank inspections, though, I would have thought it was absolutely obvious what they're providing extra - they're providing septic tank inspections. I accept that you don't want septic tank inspections, but the argument as to their necessity is pretty watertight, unlike some of the tanks.

cordially,
Scofflaw