Ms Bernie Kiely:

I will deal with the first question. The process is very different from the school bus provision in that it is not providing a service to consumers. This is about putting the responsibility on the producer of the plastic. If we regard this material as having a useful life but one that becomes waste at the end of it and has the potential to become a nuisance to society, then we wish to ensure that the people who put that product on the market take responsibility for it at the end of its useful life. This is, therefore, a producer and polluter pays system. It is a well established principle across EU legislation and it is there for other product streams. It is increasingly being used as a way of ensuring producers take responsibility for what they produce when it becomes waste. We have the waste electrical scheme that I just spoke about. When people are buying toasters, for example, they can bring back old ones and be confident they are being recycled properly. We also have a tyre scheme and several others based on this precise principle. Several more of these producer responsibility schemes are coming under the single-use plastics directive.

This is the basis for the existence of the farm plastics scheme. It is to ensure responsible treatment of the material at the end of its life. Profits are being made from selling the material. Plastic is a useful substance for farmers in their businesses, but at the end of its life it has no value and must be looked after. There is a legal responsibility on those producers in that regard. They are, therefore, legally obliged then to come up with a system whereby this material is safely and reliably collected and recycled, and this system has shown stability and success over years in providing precisely this service to farmers on behalf of producers. This is why it is different. I can understand it might be difficult to grasp precisely where this leaves contractors who are contracted to the scheme, but they are providing a service to a scheme and not to the Government.