Martin Kenny (Sligo-Leitrim, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I will be brief. I thank the witnesses for their remarks. Returning to the issue of remunicipalisation or the councils going back to collecting the waste again, I do not think any of us see each local authority buying trucks, having a yard and bringing waste to it. That is probably unfeasible. However, there is a much greater role for local authorities in all that. We should be looking at the inefficiencies and problems we have in the present system, which has a lot of flaws and difficulties. I would be very interested to know what co-operation there can be to try to move that to a new place. The ownership of the system should be in State rather than private control. That is how I see it going. I am not sure whether landing at that point at some stage in the future will take a lot of unwinding of the way things are set up now. That is clearly the problem that has been set out. How we change that is something we all need to consider. The point was made that the amount of waste we generate is continuing to grow. We need to recognise that. How are we going to arrest and reverse that growth? I am interested in hearing comments on that, perhaps from Mr. McLaughlin.