Ms Mindy O'Brien:

I thank the Chairman and members. My name is Mindy O'Brien and I represent the Environmental Pillar, which is a national network of 26 environmental organisations. We have three proposals that we would like to bring forward and they reflect the four priorities the Government has embraced, namely, waste prevention, the circular economy, the polluter-pays principle and the UN sustainable development goals, particularly goal No. 12, which deals with sustainable consumption and production.

The bonus is that all three proposals would bring money into the environmental fund. I will discuss the environmental fund briefly. It was established in 2002 and was funded through the plastic bag levy and landfill levies. At its height it yielded approximately €264 million and has now dwindled down to €46 million. We have been the victim of our own success. We have changed human behaviour, which is great. As people are not using plastic bags any more, we are not getting revenue from them. Additionally, landfill levies are down. We would like to see that the levies we are proposing would go into the environmental fund. The environmental fund is used to fund the enforcement office of the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, research and development by the agency and its waste prevention office, as well as anti-litter campaigns, environmental awareness and the environmental network.

First, I will talk about waste prevention. I would like to tell the committee a little story. I work with my local GAA club. We do coffee and tea every Saturday and sell the coffee for a euro. We had ceramic cups but all of a sudden we started to use disposable ones. I asked people if they would pay 15 cent for the disposable cups and started charging them. Within two hours I had over 50% of the people take the ceramic cups to avoid that 15 cent charge. However, one father came up to me to say he was really good at recycling at home and did not need to do it when he was out and about. That reflects the society that we live in, whereby we are all getting used to recycling at home and separating our waste but do not do it when we are out and about. We do not bring our waste home and it ends up as litter on the street or on beaches all around, or in the bins and it is just burned. The plastic bag tax shows that economic incentives work.

As an illustration of the amount of litter we are accumulating, spring cleans took place recently in Kerry and Limerick. They did a waste characterisation study and found that of the 160 tonnes they captured, 300,000 coffee cups were gathered. That is in just one week in two county councils. We propose to put a levy on single-use, non-compostable items such as coffee cups, plastic clam shells, takeaway containers and plastic cutlery. This would encourage people not to use them and to prevent waste. We also propose a deposit refund scheme for bottles and cans because they are not easily replaced. It is not easy to go into a shop and refill a bottle of Coke. We propose a 10 cent deposit on those bottle and cans, which would be refunded once returned. This is a great way to capture that material.

The second initiative which supports the circular economy is our proposal for a €2.50 levy per tonne on aggregates. The UK currently imposes a £2 levy on aggregates. It has created an imbalance between the North and the South. I note the Dáil is currently considering the Minerals Act and creating an omnibus Bill dealing with how to set royalties. There are no royalties with aggregates. Nothing is brought into the national coffers by this non-renewable resource. The problem with quarrying is that it de-waters aquifers, leaves sedimentation in streams and rivers, causes dust and vibrations to communities and increases damage to the roads from heavy trucks. There are many external costs which are not accounted for by the quarries. We also propose this to promote the circular economy. In the UK, 25% of construction and demolition waste is recycled. Here it is only 1%. This levy would encourage the development of a new recycling industry. In Ireland we produce about 32 million tonnes of aggregate a year, which we feel would bring in about €80 million.

The third issue is the polluter-pays principle. Diesel fuel has been identified as a leading emitter of greenhouse gas and pollution and this air pollution has caused 1,200 premature deaths in Ireland. This link between air pollution and premature death was identified during the smoky coal ban for Dublin back in the 1990s, adapted for the rest of the country in 2015. The benefit received by diesel should be removed. Diesel is charged at 11 cent less than petrol. What has happened is that we in Ireland are increasingly purchasing diesel cars because they are cheaper to run. This is bucking the trend throughout Europe. Purchases of diesel cars have gone down in most countries. Belgium, France and the UK have equalised excise tax between petrol and diesel. We are calling for such an equalisation. The Asthma Society supports and recommends this, as do the OECD and the EU semester programme. This proposal also embraces the polluter-pays principle.

Lastly, Ireland signed up to the UN sustainable development goals. Goal No. 12 deals with sustainable consumption and production and our three proposals fall well within that goal.

I thank the committee and am open to questions.