Mr. Pat McCabe:

I have been meeting many waste workers over the past few months at all hours of the day and night. I will give the committee a flavour of those meetings. We are discussing a sustainable circular economy. We cannot achieve that unless we have something sustainable for the people carrying out the work. It is dirty work. Everyone in this room sees the people on the back of the lorries. They are labouring on well below what is the living wage of €14.80 per hour. The wages out there are between €13 and €13.80. These are essential workers who cannot sustain their own lives on such wages. That has to change if we are going to have a sustainable circular economy, particularly in domestic wage collection. There are also difficulties with their security of employment, as many of them are employed by agencies and could be dispensed with overnight. A difficulty raised in all of my conversations with workers had to do with routes lengthening, meaning higher productivity from them and longer hours. Generally speaking, though, there is no overtime rate in the industry and, aside from Bord na Móna, we do not have collective bargaining rights. This is a major problem and should be taken into consideration where the sustainable circular economy is concerned through the transposition of the European directive on the minimum wage and collective bargaining. We need to raise standards in this industry. Otherwise, we will find ourselves in deep trouble.