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

For me, it illustrates that this approach is not going to work on a large scale. Even with a huge discount, people are not attracted. I think it needs to be something that is really broad. We can all recall the cultural shift when the plastic bags change happened. It discouraged people from utilising single-use bags because they had to pay for them every time. With this, the same thing has to happen, as Deputy Shanahan said, at the level of the multiples. I looked at what is happening in France, where they have proposed that a proportion of the supermarket space be allocated for refills. They have not done it yet but they said by 2030, I think, that 20% or 25% of the supermarket space has to be allocated for that purpose. I met the French minister who is working on the issue. We have research going on into how that is working in French supermarkets. We will see what comes back from that.

I also met with representatives from Tesco. I knew that the company ran a pilot refill project in the UK and I asked them to do the same in Ireland. They did so for a while but then gave up on it. Many of these schemes only work when everybody does it together and they are not seen as something negative for one's business. If a business owner tells a customer that they do not provide a container for the product they have just bought, the business owner's fear is that the customer will go elsewhere to a place that does. If it is done on the scale of town, county or country then it is a different thing, particularly if it is accompanied by a discount.

With a lot of products, a large proportion of the price is the packaging. If one does not have to pay for the packaging, one would expect that would provide an efficiency.

The Deputy referred to the cost of these reverse vending machines for businesses and the fact that a very large company can afford to install a big machine but a small company cannot. I understand that, and it is for this reason that grants are available for small companies. It is also for this reason that very small companies do not have to accept bottles or cans back at all. We will continue to help them in any way we can. If the Deputy has particular examples of companies that are having difficulties, I am happy to meet them or their representative bodies.