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

The Senator mentioned single-use Zimmer frames and so on. People are really shocked when they are told by the hospital not to bring these items back and just keep them or throw them away. That is part of the culture in the health sector with everything being focused on infection control. It would be worth inviting a procurement official from the Department of Health to appear before the committee to discuss that.

The Senator mentioned virgin plastic being used for reusable cups and so on. I take her point on that and we will look into it further. She also mentioned festivals.

A festival is a closed loop and a brilliant place to try out something to see what works. Some of the festivals do deposit return schemes on cups to make sure they come back. I noticed that Electric Picnic banned disposal vapes this year and, most importantly, stopped selling them on site. Festivals depend on generators that are run on diesel but they have the opportunity to switch. There are many different things they could do. I see a lot of greenwashing in some festivals but I see some festivals, such as Body & Soul, which are making very substantial differences and really attempting to make the changes.

Local authorities license these festivals. They could attach conditions. I would like to prepare a template set of conditions for a green festival and then ask county councils and county councillors to impose those conditions on new events stating, for example, that festivals must operate a deposit return scheme and should not sell disposable vapes on site. It would just be basic stuff ensuring that we can have much greener festivals. People are shocked by the level of rubbish that they leave behind.

Bring centres tend to be run by local authorities. The conditions set for them are set by county councils. A range of different things happen. Some of them allow charities to come along and take away items that are left there, such as bicycles and so on. That is something that local authorities should legislate for.