Michael Fitzmaurice (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I wish to make one final point. Mr. Moloney and a previous contributor both spoke about private operators. It was stated that they are in competition with the Irish Farm Film Producers Group. That is fine. For all the years when plastic was good and the private operators were sending plastic out of the country, the Irish Farm Film Producers Group was getting paid money to do nothing with a lot of plastic. The Irish Farm Film Producers Group took that money for years while the plastics industry was good and private operators, which was not subsidised, sent the plastic out of the country. The Irish Farm Film Producers Group received subsidies from industry and did not have to do anything. It did not have to collect the plastic, but received the subsidy for it.

There are now 10,000, 12,000 or 14,000 tonnes of plastic to be dealt with and, after so many years of getting money for jam, to be quite frank about it, when the private operators got plastic out of the country and received no subsidy, the Irish Farm Film Producers Group, IFFPG, is not prepared to call an amnesty and do something not only for the farmers, but for Ireland Inc. to address the amount of plastic that is hanging around. Mr. Moloney should go back and have a rethink of what he has said to us. I will follow up on the tonnage that was taken out of the country by the private sector and for which the IFFPG was paid by the industry. I know everything about competition. Are our guests saying to me that the IFFPG should be the only entity in this country with a monopoly, that it should get a subsidy and forget about the private people?