12th February 2013
By Bryan T. Smyth, Reporting from Cork County Hall
bryan@TheCork.ie
Cork’s County Manager has defended the sending out of 6,800 debt collection letters to former customers of the County Council’s refuse collection service. It emerged last week that many Cork residents received demand letters from the “Stubbs Gazette” debt collection agency. The amounts owed date back to late 2010, before the County Council sold it’s refuse collection business to “Country Clean Recycling”. Since that time people have switched to using various private bin collectors, but many customers never settled their final bills with the cash-strapped County Council.
County Manager Martin Riordan says as unpopular as it seems, he has a duty to collect the outstanding 1.8 million euro for the Council Martin Riordan says IF people have received demand letters, for amounts they do not owe, then Stubbs Gazette will be happy to close their files if they can provide evidence of payment