Mr. Liam Moloney:

The regulations allow an approved body, which the IFFPG is, to fund itself through a levy if it sees fit and also we have the leeway to charge collection charges. At the moment, we make up around 70% of our income through the recycling levy and the remaining 30% comes from collection charges to farmers which are weight-based. We have gone with this model because the weight-based charging encourages farmers to bring in plastic that is less contaminated. For that reason we have gone with that model. If we were to abolish collection charges to farmers we would have to increase the levy because there is a certain amount of funding we need to operate each year and we also think it would negatively impact on the quality of the plastic we bring in at our collection points.