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

I thank the Minister of State for his reply. He is right, and one of the CIRCULÉIRE projects he refers to is the recovery of injectables. Plastic injectables are being recovered in a successful project so there is no sector that is out of bounds. The key issue will be what targets the Department sets. Is the Department any closer to deciding if there will be a reuse target in particular sectors? If so, what will that look like and what will the Government be asking of people? Will there be a change to the extended producer responsibilities and those obligations? I ask the Minister of State to outline what the shape of the new regime for target setting will be, or does the Government still have some way to go on that?

On energy efficiency, every Department and agency is required to produce its energy efficiency details and the Minister of State is reporting that in this meeting. Should we not be doing something similar with the key public procurers in order that they see there is a framework available to them to adopt green procurement? There could be some tracking system within which they report on what is procured and do so in a different way to minimise their environmental impact. Could that be done in the same way that Departments report on their energy efficiency? I do not know if the Department is getting adequate reporting within the framework but a couple of years ago reporting was almost impossible. It was like trying to catch an eel as it was very hard to get a handle on what different Departments were doing. Can the Department get cross-government agreement to have some reporting regime on green procurement?