Jackie Cahill (Tipperary, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

We have resumed in public session. Our first witness is not yet online so while we are waiting, I will give an update on my visit to the Littleton recycling plant on Monday. Members have an open invitation to visit. It will facilitate everyone, but because it is operating a Covid pod, it can only facilitate one person at a time. There was a misunderstanding about that over the weekend and I apologise for that. If any member of the committee wants to go there himself or herself to see the recycling plant at first hand, he or she will be accommodated and arrangements can be made.

The plant is up and working. It is handling farm waste plastic. It is dealing with about 3.5 tonnes an hour and the end product is in the form of pelleted plastic which is being used to make recyclable plastic bags. There is another plant to be built on site at the back end of the year which will take the plastic at a different stage of processing and will be used to make wax which can then be reused in the remaking of film plastic. They reckon they will be able to process 25,000 tonnes of plastic there, building to 45,000 over the next 12 to 18 months. They will be looking for more than farm plastic, but also other plastic used by other industries, such as meat plants. There will be a fairly significant appetite for plastic into the plant. I saw the whole process where the water was squeezed out of the plastic and that water was filtered and recycled. The dirt is used for top fill on landfill, taken away by AES. I consider the plant to be working well. An industrial loader loads the plastic into a big hopper. They have a problem with foreign objects in the plastic and they hope to improve the sensors to stop that. They found a bit of a front loader had gone in with plastic shortly before I arrived and it had damaged part of the machinery. The line is up and running efficiently and it is hoped in time it will be a home-grown solution to our farm plastics problem.