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

The deposit return scheme for bringing back bottles and cans goes live nationally on 1 February. People will see these machines appearing in their local supermarkets. They may be in the car park or in the store, depending on what store management has decided. Any small business owner with any queries about the scheme can talk to Re-turn, which is the company running the scheme. They will advise about grants and so on.

The Senator mentioned the GAA. I met the sustainability managers of the GAA about the use of plastic bottles. It is typical that a whole pallet full of bottles arrives on training day and everyone is given a fresh plastic bottle. One approach to this issue is to have a deposit return machine in the GAA club, possibly one where instead of giving money back, the money goes as a donation to the local club. However, even better than that is to have a water fountain. Everybody brings their own bottle and they refill it from the water fountain. This is a simpler and cheaper approach, but I think we will do both, particularly at the larger GAA venues, because reverse vending machines are not going to be ready for 1 February. I have been very keen to make sure that we have the narrowest scope for what is happening on 1 February so that we launch on time. For version two, I am happy to go around to clubs or civic community sites to see if we can find a way to provide grant aid for reverse vending machines.

The biggest opportunity area for the circular economy is construction and development. That is where much of our focus has been. It is a business thing; t is possibly not going to be very relatable to the public, but it is a big area. Regarding the question of whether local authorities should do more, I feel that local authorities do not have a lot of power in many areas. However, they do have power regarding their civic amenity sites and to the conditions that they attach to event licensing. I would like local authorities to use that power. Through the LGMA or the CCMA perhaps we can make a template which they can adopt nationally. I will work on that.

The Senator referred to how people come along to a civic amenity site and remove stuff. Circular economy businesses generally have a model where they get paid to take away something that is worthless to someone. They do something with it that adds value and then they sell it and make money. They are making money at both ends of the chain from the time they take in the product to the time they give it away. It could be something as simple as taking away people's grass clippings and getting paid for it, turning it into compost and selling it. That is the basic model for all of these companies. The green public procurement guidelines are out for public consultation over the coming weeks. I expect they will be ready by the end of the year.

Regarding the local enterprise offices and ETBs, there is a range of grants such as the GreenStart and GreenPlus available through local enterprise offices. Perhaps the Senator discussed these with Enterprise Ireland. I am happy to engage with them more on this. Enterprise Ireland has someone working specifically on green procurement and the circular economy.

The skills shortage is a huge problem in the context of a circular economy. I spoke to businesses that are involved in the circular economy sector. For example, I spoke to a shoemaker who told me he had more business than he could take on. He just cannot find the staff. I heard the same thing from a person doing clothes alterations. These types of businesses need people trained. They emphasised that we need to focus more on skills-based training. I met the Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, Deputy Simon Harris, about this recently. He has a green skills strategy and I think a circular economy skills focus would be important. Within my Department, there is a textile advisory group that works with the sector. Skills training needs to be a major area of focus for us.