Mr. Conor Walsh:

Mr. Crinion will deal with investment. There is a waste capacity report on our website. It shows all the facilities that have been developed by our members in the waste industry. Almost 200 have been built from profits. The money we make out of the business goes back as investment into the business, but Mr. Crinion might say more on that.

On the issue of illegal dumping, in the Dublin city area, in particular, came up a lot this morning, if there are people on social protection payments who cannot afford a waste collection service, we have suggested to Government and the Opposition that there should be a voucher scheme and that we would support that.

Like people get a fuel voucher, they would get a voucher from the Department of Social Protection that pays a certain amount towards their waste collection. It could be a couple of hundred euro and would not cost the State a huge amount of money. We would honour those when they came in to us. Perhaps then people who cannot afford the service could afford the service and would not resort to illegal dumping. That is something positive that could come out of the committee if anyone thinks it is worth doing.

The CCPC and the report, the competition issue and the efficiencies are all kind of interlinked. The CCPC report showed the majority of people wanted multiple operators. There was a Behaviour and Attitudes survey and 65% of people went for multiple operators, knowing it was multiple trucks. Some 35%, generally single-person households, favoured a single operator. The majority of people want multiple operators even though it means multiple trucks. CCPC criticism was not of where there were multiple operators but of where there was only one. That is where it had the problem. It said there was not enough competition. The CCPC did a report previously, in 1999 if I recall correctly, on Greenstar in north Wicklow and whether it was acting in an anticompetitive manner because there was no competition. It was the only company collecting. The commission decided then the competition was there but it was in neighbouring areas and could come in if Greenstar's price went high. It compared Greenstar's price with everyone else's price at the time and said it was a fair price. The CCPC had therefore recognised the competition is there in neighbouring areas and will come in if the price goes too high. It was not really trying to deal with multiple operators but with areas where there was only one operator.

On the efficiencies and going back to the court case, which I read a lot of, the judge ultimately decided if a truck goes into Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown and collects from 14,000 houses in a year or whatever number it was, that was very efficient. Even though it was not collecting from every house it was collecting from enough houses for it to be efficient. Many of the inefficiencies were actually the transport from the collection area to the depot. The depot could be half an hour away or 20 minutes away or whatever, so that is where it was lost. So long as the truck could go out and get its fill within a reasonable area, it was highly efficient. It did not need to go to every house to get to the maximum efficiency. The court recognised monopolies are inherently inefficient anyway.

Mr. Crinion might deal quickly with investment.