Mr. James Fitzgerald:

From the farmers' point of view, it would be convenient and it would be local. Those would be the two. At present, the IFFPG model has depots. It has only five or six depots in the country. That means that there are large parts of the country that are not covered with any service. The second part of it is that farmers are bringing in plastic by tractor and trailer and there is an outer limit to how far they will travel with the tractor and trailer. That is another aspect to it.

The situation has evolved, with contractors leaving the collection of farm plastics and with others staying in it. Gaps have now opened up in the market where areas are not viable to service because of the distance and location. A public service model would fall in a good bit there in relation to that. If one was going to Connemara, for example, one would be travelling quite a distance to get farm plastics. That is where the model breaks down on economics.

On the environmental side, the balance that is not collected by IFFPG is collected by us and maybe there is merit in the support of the private individual in places. There will be 30% left out there if IFFPG has not the reach within the market to collect it all. There would be an environmental benefit from that point of view.