Privacy concerns reinforce urgent need for radical overhaul of privatised waste collection – Pa Daly TD
26 August 2025
Sinn Fein TD for the Environment, Climate, Energy and Transport, has called on government to urgently introduce regulation of the privatised waste collection industry.
Deputy Daly’s was commenting on Panda’s new bin imaging system in which the private waste collector takes pictures of a household’s rubbish and recycling and sends it back to them.
Teachta Daly said:
“The privacy concerns raised by Panda’s new bin imaging system reinforce the urgent need to introduce regulation to Ireland’s privatised waste collection service.
“Despite being an essential service there is no regulator. This makes waste collection an outlier when compared to other basic utilities like water and energy.
“While the absence of a regulator is bad enough, the new bin imaging system introduces an additional dimension to be concerned about.
“It’s no longer just about affordability and sustainability, now it is about our privacy too.
“While technological innovations can be welcome, they must be subject to scrutiny and oversight, particularly when in the hands of private companies that are motivated by profit.
“Capturing images that potentially contain personal data should not happen without proper regulation. And in the waste collection sector, there is none.
“Sinn Féin is not a lone voice when it comes to criticism of Ireland’s waste collection market. The competition watchdog, the CCPC, pointed out the urgent need for a regulator seven years ago.
“Unsurprisingly, for a government that favours the corporate balance sheet over ordinary people, no such change has been made. The continued paralysis of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael on this matter even caused the chairman of the CCPC to argue in April this year that the current waste market structure will never deliver for the Irish public.
“While Sinn Féin have been clear that ultimately we want to a public waste management system, in the absence of that, the government must urgently introduce regulation to the sector. It cannot continue to operate like the Wild West.”
