The previous week the residents’ bins had not been lifted due to the poor weather conditions from Storm Emma. When the collections resumed last week some found their blue bin waste thrown in with the ‘dirty’ rubbish. 

One annoyed resident who contacted the Herald said: “We’ve done our bit over the last fortnight with the blue and green bins. A lorry landed around this morning and fired the whole lot was fired into the one lorry and away off they went. Where do the rules apply there?”

They added: “The community here in Fermanagh have spent their month recycling, as per Council rules and regulations, we’ve done our best to do everything correctly, and the Council comes around and says ‘you know what, that doesn’t matter this week’, and it all goes into the one bin. Where do we stand from here? Do we just throw anything into any bin and it’s acceptable? If it’s not acceptable, why was it acceptable this week?”

A spokesman for Fermanagh and Omagh District Council said only a small number of bins in Maguiresbridge, five in total, had been added into the landfill waste. 

“The crew lifted the bins as they had been missed due to the exceptional snow earlier. All other bins across the district were collected as normal, by the correct vehicle,” they said. 

“Fermanagh and Omagh District Council would like to apologise for this error and all refuse collection staff have been reminded of the necessity to empty correct bins into the appropriate lorry. On this occasion the small number of recyclable waste bins did not contaminate the load as the load was already scheduled to go to landfill given that it was ordinarily a landfill collection.”