Mr. Thomas Burke:

We share a local shopping centre and I wanted to relate an experience of mine. It has been a concern of retailers that the deposit return scheme will lead to extensive litter and waste building up around the machines and when I went to the centre over the Christmas period to return some glass bottles there were bottles all around the machine, as far as the eye could see. The system could obviously not cope with the level of supply. It will be unsightly and will drive traffic through their car parks unnecessarily.

It was suggested that innovation was at the centre of all this and retailers are innovating in this regard. They work with suppliers to look at new packaging solutions and to reduce some of the unnecessary packaging to which Deputy Dooley referred. It is not in our interest to continue to produce this packaging because we have to pay to take it off the market. At the same time, we need to be cognisant of food security and consumer security, particularly in the case of coffee which is a hot, hazardous substance from which the consumer needs to be protected. All these issues need to be borne in mind.