Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I very much appreciate that and I appreciate everyone coming here. It has been a very useful meeting. I did promise I would come back to Mr. Walker, which was difficult because I was listening to everybody. According to the plastics strategy, the Commission will propose new rules on waste management. These include clearer obligations for national authorities to set up separate collection and targets to encourage investment in recycling capacity and avoid infrastructural over-capacity for processing mixed waste, for example, incineration. I could go through its circular economy package notes throughout the day. The Commission could not be clearer that this is not the way we should be going.

Our Bill is political in the sense that this really is a political choice because it asks that we avail of the mechanisms within the Waste Management Act 1996. It is really a political question in terms of whether we want to join the myriad countries that are looking at this issue in terms of both. Ms O'Brien is right. We concentrated on the deposit refund scheme and bottles today but there is the issue around the use of disposable throwaway plastic coffee cups, cutlery and other items. We must address this across the board for climate reasons, environmental protection reasons and circular economy development reasons and to simply meet EU rules in terms of how we are going to get from 35% to 55%. If someone has a better idea and if some other party will say that it has another mechanism which will help us do that, I would love to hear it and I would love to read cited international papers - such as the studies carried out by Eunomia and others - which fit in with what the Commission is saying.

What we are suggesting in this Bill is absolutely in tune with where European regulation is going and is also in tune with ensuring due regard is had and with the precautionary principle in terms of protecting our marine environment in particular but also our land environment. I hope we can proceed to Committee Stage. A lot of further work will be done. We recognise that we want to do it in step with other international developments, particularly in Scotland and the rest of the UK because they are similar jurisdictions, and France. Our nearest neighbours are legislating in this direction. We are not saying it must be done tomorrow but I believe we should go to Committee Stage. What this Bill does is signal intent and the desire to use the Waste Management Act 1996 and indeed work with Repak and other industry people here, particularly small retailers who will be at the centre of our concern in terms of getting it right going back to those days where when we went back with a bottle, it was to a small retailer. This could be an opportunity to turn around the nature of the retailer-customer relationship. It is not just about this bottle and the cups but this is an important part of the overall picture because it involves the public. It is something we can all understand. If we get the public behind us on that, it is so much easier to understand all the other different strands involved and the various changes we will have to make. We have done good work in the past 20 years but now is the time to jump up to a much more extensive recycling circular economy system. This is one part of it but it is an important part because the public would be with us on it and it will help us to do the other things we will need to do.