Mr. Frank McDonagh:

I am a fairly large importer of tyres. I am also a retailer of tyres. We are currently in a situation in which we must report all the imported tyres we placed on the market to PRL. We do not have a problem with that at all. We think it is a very good system because that is where we collect the data on the market. We currently have a situation in which only the car tyre category, which includes cars, vans and 4x4s, is attracting a visible fee of €3.44. If PRL sends that information to Repak at the end of the month, Repak will send us the invoice to pay. It is a simple calculation for anybody looking at that information on a debtors list in the Repak organisation. I am not casting any aspersions on Repak. I say that categorically. However, under the requirements for keeping information confidential, it is not allowed. It is the simplest thing to work out. If €3.44 is divided into the number of tyres, everybody will know what I am doing. Currently it is against EU regulations and the law in Ireland. I have just been informed the relevant ISO standard is 27001. What am I to do next month when I have to report what I have placed on the market? Do I give the figures, in which case the possibility arises that everything I do will be known to a third party? It does not stand up. There are serious glitches. The whole thing has not been thought out properly. That is one thing.

Deputy Brian Stanley asked what we could do. We have already established by what Mr. Niall Murray has said, that the tyre industry is one that wants to be compliant. We have shown that in the previous scheme which tried to determine what comes on the market and where it goes. We are essentially a compliant organisation.

We then hear, however, of the scourge of tyres being thrown everywhere around the country. The actual cost of disposal currently amounts to approximately €1 per car tyre yet we have been told at this meeting that tyres are being dumped. What will happen when the cost rises to €3.44 per tyre? The dumping problem will be crazy. There is also huge discrepancy between the positions North and South. Lorry loadss of tyres will come into the South but where do they go then? These numbers will not be captured in the figures outlined and this will be true of many various avenues. The ITWRA is saying that the retailers of Ireland will capture all of the waste and allow it to be dealt with in an economic manner. If the Minister wants to engage well with the tyre industry, then he needs, first, to let the industry run this scheme and, second, to set a maximum rather than a specified fee. Competition will then result from that maximum fee. It is a very simple solution.