Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I do not agree with the Minister of State but I reserve the opportunity to submit an amendment on Report Stage. The Minister of State needs to reflect on whether, if the sole objective of "policies and practices" is keeping materials in use and extracting the most value from them, this will not embrace the wrong choice of materials in the first place. It is important a circular economy looks at the materials chosen in the first place and does not take it as given that concrete is the way we build and once we keep the materials used in sector for as long as possible we have fulfilled circularity. Equally, by not referencing design, which is the concept of the service and what we are trying to do ahead of the materials chosen, we lose an element of this. Construction, travel and food or nourishment are the three big sectors.

In terms of construction and travel, the design concepts that underpin the way the market works are crucial. For example, we now assume that construction has to have space for parking a lot of vehicles that are owned. If we moved to thinking differently about how vehicles are used, we would not have so much underground parking space. Similarly, if we embraced timber as opposed to concrete, a policy that has been embraced far more in Scotland than here, we would have a different profile of materials used in the sector. I ask the Minister of State to reflect on it. This is the sort of thing the Attorney General likes to have. Once there are principles and policies, he is happy and content. I do not think he has given the time to look at what it is the Minister of State is trying to achieve here. I ask that the Minister of State goes back and asks the Attorney General to reflect again on some of the quirks of the sectors and the way the Government is trying achieve change in them.