Mr. Thom Fox:

I will respond to Deputy Troy's question on when we were formed and what is our body. We were all prominent members of the ITIA and specifically the retail section. Our president at the time was Mr. Kevin Farrell and in 2015 he engaged with retailers when doing a tour of the country. We were told the current system of Tyre Recovery Activity Compliance Scheme, TRACS, was not functioning properly because waste was not being tracked properly. It was indicated that an industry-led scheme was tried but it was not working because of environmental factors and the fact that tyres could not be tracked. At that stage it was mooted there would be producer responsibility initiative, PRI. At the time, the ITIA president engaged with all members and particularly retail members because we went around the country and asked them what they thought of the matter. The overwhelming majority of people visited wanted a PRI. With that regard he had a mandate from retail members to try to work with the Department and have a fit-for-purpose PRI scheme, which was going to imposed on the market anyway as the previous example did not work.

A PRI puts responsibility on the producer; it would catch a tyre at the beginning of a process and it could be picked up at the end. It is a very logical and simple scheme. The ITIA decided at that stage it wanted to do something different and the president left the organisation. As far as I know, the ITIA then withdrew from talks with the Department. The retailers spoken to at the time had given a mandate to the ITIA to negotiate a deal on our behalf. It stepped away from the talks but we still wanted a PRI as it is the best way of capturing tyres sold on the market. It would have alleviated the problems of back-street traders and people who were non-compliant, as they would have to comply and demonstrate where tyres were bought. They are one of the biggest thorns in the legitimate side of the competent retailers in Ireland. Second-hand tyres proliferated all over the country with no tracking of waste tyres. Waste tyres were coming into the country and in my submission I noted that in a container, over 30% would be waste and could not be put on cars because they were so bad. They were ending up as an environmental problem.

That was the mandate at the time but Mr. Farrell left the organisation because he lost the mandate from the board. At that stage, the retailers who were still interested in and wanted regulation in our industry looked to plough ahead and go to the Department so as to influence the negotiations. Unfortunately, we came in late to the stage but we have had meetings with the Department and tried to get the best deal possible for retailers. That is who we represent. We have put forward arguments but we were shot down on many of them because they would have been unpalatable for other groups in the industry. We asked for concessions but they were shot down because the Department wanted everybody on board. It felt some issues we have would not be tolerated by other groups.

However, we are where we are.

We have no official membership. I have listed the names of the directors of the ATRS on my sheet. We are the directors. We have no money; we pay for anything we want to do ourselves because we are interested in having proper regulation in the retail sector. We engaged with the Department and we got clearance. We are a limited company with a statutory body. We had to make our bona fidesknown to the Department before it would see us.It has accepted our .bona fides. We have also met with the RSA and talked to Repak. We want to be a positive force for having proper regulation in the country.

We welcome that the truck levy has been postponed. We will be looking to see it postponed further because it would result in a distortion of cross-Border traffic and we do not want to see anybody going out of business. There is another workable solution for the truck industry for tracking the tyres, which is something we will discuss with the Department in the tyre working group. I will not discuss it here today because it is probably not the place for it. I just want to get our message across that we are a bona fideorganisation. We are here to support legislation that supports family retail shops. We want things to be done right. We do not want the backstreet traders having a free ride to destroy businesses. All competent retailers pay their taxes and rates and pay their staff. They do everything above board yet there is no regulation in the industry. This is the first piece of regulation that will level the playing field for retailers who have been compliant all down through the years.

I am not quite happy with the way the Deputy questioned the bona fides of our organisation and asked how many members we have. I will leave it at that.