Brian Stanley (Laois, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I note that there is almost €40 million in the environmental fund for waste prevention and enforcement initiatives, litter prevention measures and so on, but it does not take into account what local authorities are spending in this area. They have to dig into their budgets every year to provide a lot of funding for environmental measures. The plastic bag and landfill site levies are obviously doing their job, but we need to broaden the number of sources of income for the environmental fund. I introduced a waste Bill in the Dáil a few months ago. The provisions of that legislation would certainly go some way towards achieving that objective in the context of the return of disposable items.

In the document before us dealing with Programme F, percentages are given for recovery rates. While I welcome the increased levels of recovery, the figures we have available are only up to 2013. They are for municipal, household, commercial and packaging waste recovery. I would welcome more up-to-date figures. While I do not expect to receive the figures for this year, or even 2016, we should certainly have figures for 2014 and 2015. Perhaps there is an issue with the gathering of that data, but I just wanted to highlight the point.

Litter has become a huge problem. We need to introduce heavier penalties for illegal dumping which formed part of the Bill I introduced earlier this year. People certainly should not throw cigarette butts out of their car windows, but we really need to get to grips with those who come along in pick-up trucks or lorries and tip loads of waste, some of which may be hazardous, in the Dublin mountains, the Slieve Bloom mountains and elsewhere. We need to tackle the people who are dumping huge amounts of waste illegally on a commercial or semi-commercial basis.

I would like to see figures for the levels of waste reduction, although it would probably be hard to produce them. If we are to get to grips with the problem, waste reduction at source is the key. We have to stop the production of waste. We are all aware of recent reports on the international plastics industry. As a small island nation, we have a chance to do something about this problem on a North-South basis. I hope, when the Executive is up and running in the North, we will be able to take initiatives in this area to deal with tyres, plastics and so forth in a joined-up manner. We need a joined-up, all-island approach to the reduction of waste at source, which is the really big issue.

Reports on 9 September last highlighted the fact that the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission had refused to join the group being established by the Department to monitor domestic waste collection charges. Where do we stand now, if the commission has pulled out? What credibility does that body have? Monitoring is fine, but what power does the Minister have in controlling what the refuse collection companies charge their customers? When are the changes coming into force? Last July we were to have an exclusively pay-by-weight system. However, there was a lot of debate and discussion about that matter at the time and the introduction of such a system was deferred until September or October. Where do we stand now? What power does the Minister have to keep control of charges? As I recall it, from the discussions we had at the time, the Minister will have very little power. What about the powers and credibility of the monitoring group? Will it just be a commentator? Will it be stating that what is happening is terrible and that it is not happy about it, while being able to do damn all about it?