Mr. Oisín Coghlan:

I want to allay Deputy Brophy's fears about the impact of a levy or a deposit on coffee cups or Coke cans. Deputy Brophy's concern was that in making it high enough to make a difference, we could end up really punishing those who have no easy alternative.

Let us suppose, in the case of coffee cups, there was a levy of 15 cent. If a person drank one coffee per day, the cost would come to approximately €5 per month. I have no doubt about what coffee shops would do – they do it already but they do not promote it. There would be a keep cup for €5. When a person goes in on the first day of a month, the person would have the choice of starting to pay 15 cent each day. Alternatively, the person could buy a cup for €5 on that day and will have saved the same amount as the levy in a month. There are easy ways to avoid the levy on the coffee cup. The cost of 15 cent for any given day might not be enough to disincentivise a person. However, if there is an easy alternative that allows a consumer to make the money back in a month and then start saving money, I believe people would opt for it.

On Coke cans, the point Ms O'Brien made was that we do not need a levy or price differential on the soft drink can that is enough to put people off buying an individual can. All we need is a small deposit such that when a person finds ten cans on the street, it is worth that person's while to bring them back to the shop. It is not necessarily the purchaser who does it, as Ms O'Brien has said.

We have had some experience of this recently. We run a waste education programme at a major summer festival. Last year, those involved put 20 cent on a pint of beer. The price went from €6 to €6.20. It was not enough to inhibit consumption in any way but €30,000 worth of deposits were returned to us. People collected 120,000 plastic glasses or thereabouts from around the site over the course of three days. These were not the same people. Different people went to collect them. Basically, we created a market for plastic glasses in that case. In this case it would be cans or bottles on which there is a deposit. The amount of the deposit does not have to be enough to inhibit purchase. Unlike the plastic bag tax, it does not have to be high enough to inhibit a consumer from buying the thing. It need only be high enough to make it interesting for someone else to collect it if it is dropped.