Mattie McGrath (Tipperary South, Independent)

I congratulate the Minister on his appointment and I look forward to engaging with him and the Department on many issues. We are told the plastic bag levy is an environmental waste measure in line with international best practice and that Ireland should be a role model. We should and could be a role model because we are a small country by any standard, and our waste issue should be dealt with in a far more pragmatic way. If we had proper waste regulations, compliance and management we would be able to market ourselves as green which would be a big boost to our agricultural and food exports. Therefore, this legislation is very important and there is no doubt the Minister is well aware of this.

I know from dealing with previous issues that the environment is a very sensitive and emotive area with tenuous and slow progress. I know this from my county, where there are major issues regarding landfill and the transfer of materials that should not go to landfill but do, and a fight to maintain and extend a landfill and to source a new one. For decades, there has been an issue with regard to Hardbog, a site in south Tipperary. The county council acquired a site but it has been in the courts as various actions and cases have been taken. Huge expense has been associated with the procurement of the site and trying to prove it would be safe and would not be an environmental hazard to water supplies and neighbouring landowners.

In fairness, the EPA's hands are not clean either because it did not come up trumps when it was required to do so in support of the county council. It dragged its feet, and the situation has continued for years longer than it should and there is still no light at the end of the tunnel. The lifetime of the existing landfill is way over what it should have been and it has been extended again and again.

Meanwhile, the good collection service operated in south Tipperary by the county council is being blown out of the water. While we have to encourage competition and private sources are good, in neighbouring counties when local authorities were removed from the collection service it was not always good for the consumer because the less competition there is, the more expensive something can get. The county council has had a good track record and history of recording statistics on the amount of material going to landfill or elsewhere.

There must be incentives for reducing packaging, which is a huge issue. Anybody with a young family knows that when buying a little gift for a child, or buying household goods or everyday groceries, the amount of waste in packaging materials is sheer madness. It is totally unnecessary and overdone. Much of it is slick packaging to make products look better but stricter penalties should be enforced. The consumer should not be expected to dispose of this because 50% or more of the volume of material goes on packaging and better efforts must be made to try to deal with this.

I am worried that a number of households are withdrawing from the service, although I do not have the exact figures, and, as I said yesterday in the context of the Communications Regulation (Postal Services) Bill, that there will be cherry-picking. The people concerned do not live in remote areas because they would not have received planning permission but they live on isolated or tertiary roads and the trucks, due to their sheer size, will not travel up those roads to collect waste. If the people are obliged to bring their rubbish a mile or so to a collection point, there is no incentive in that. There should be fairness and people should not be discriminated against because of where they live.

We must encourage people to come out of non-compliance. Education has a big part to play in that, and the education should be started in our national schools. April has been designated national spring clean month and most schools are taking part in all sorts of competitions as well as being involved in the Tidy Towns competition and the green flag awards. Some schools have up to five green flags. We should encourage them to get involved in the national spring clean. The education of our young people is important. People of my age and older got into bad habits. It was a different era so it is important to educate and encourage people to reuse and recycle. Education has a major role.

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