Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I thank Deputy Bruton. He is a former Minister with responsibility for this area and he has ongoing interest in this area. Deputy Bruton said he thinks that while targets and strategies are being set we are not actually managing to meet them in practice and that we are not likely to meet our targets. We are meeting our recycling targets at present. We are in compliance. The question is whether we will meet our 2025 or 2030 targets on our current trajectory.

One of the very practical things happening is the deposit return scheme. I imagine it was on Deputy Bruton's radar when he was Minister. It will produce a large volume of very well segregated plastic and aluminium for recycling in Ireland. Incredibly, every year we use 1.9 billion bottles and cans in a one-off way. I expect that 90% of these will come back through this scheme. It is a well understood scheme that happens in other countries. It will have an impact on the bottom line of our recycling targets. It has to impact it.

Something else that will dramatically change the numbers is the fact that I have mandated that since 1 July all businesses must be supplied with green and brown bins. A total of 70% of the waste in the black bin of a commercial enterprise should be in a green bin or a brown bin. Since July they are being provided with green and brown bins by their collectors. It is in their financial interest and bottom-line interest to segregate their waste. I expect we will have much better streams of segregated plastic and food waste as a result of this. These two measures will immediately affect the bottom line in next year's figures.

Deputy Bruton mentioned building and construction. This is the largest area for the circular economy. It is not an area in which we are doing well. We think of Ireland as a country that does not do a lot of mining or extraction but in fact we extract a lot of aggregates and clay. We do a lot of quarrying. Typically on an Irish building site whatever is on site is demolished, the clay is removed, everything is taken off-site in trucks and often taken to an old quarry to backfill. Then the new materials required are extracted afresh and brought up in more trucks to the site. When I go out to builders and speak to them about this on site they say they want to change this. They know it would make sense not to have to do this. They know it would save them money. They know from their experience in other European countries that this is not what happens there. There are hubs in a city where the spoil from one construction project is used in another. The primary barrier to doing this is their ability to obtain a licence from the EPA in a reasonable period of time to allow them to move materials from one site to another. It is not just a matter of deregulating. We cannot just go to the EPA and tell it to let everybody use everything. We know from the mica scandal that it is very important that materials are properly tested, segregated and classed before they are used again on another project.

I will shortly release new regulations for the EPA that specifically refer to this. It will be open for consultation in the coming weeks. The EPA is being reformed under new primary legislation to offer guaranteed determination times, similar to the work being done with An Bord Pleanála. This is our approach to solving the problem of the difficulty of obtaining environmental permits to reuse construction waste on site. It is the biggest opportunity for improvement in the circular economy at a time when we are working on the national development plan and building 30,000 homes a year and a lot of other infrastructure. It is important that we get the circularity of our construction to work.

Deputy Bruton mentioned sectoral targets. As he knows, the new circular economy strategy will contain sectoral targets. This is because they are in the circular economy Act. He also mentioned the importance of eco-design, which is true. A product has to be designed in such a way that it can be reused. It is very difficult to come back to a product afterwards to try to reuse it or recycle it when it has not been designed in that way. CIRCULÉIRE is part of Irish manufacturing research. It is a group of experts who provide a facility for research on circular design. It has come to me with a proposal to expand its offering and create a centre of excellence for eco-design in Ireland. The idea is that a company could go to it with a proposal for how it wants to redesign its product to make it more circular.

It would have the facilities, laboratories and so on to design and test it and would also provide the information and education on that.

The Deputy mentioned having sectoral compacts to sign up to. That is happening already. Repak has the plastic pledge. There is also a food waste pledge. I am not sure how that is branded. These things are happening and the plastic pledge has been around for a number of years.