Mr. Kevin O'Donoghue:

I will respond to the last few questions relating to the market, incineration, landfill and recycling. The price monitoring group does not look at those prices. It is looking at the prices waste operators are charging consumers rather than the back end. Regarding the implications of the Chinese decision, the waste market in Ireland has transitioned a great deal over the last while. We were putting 92% of our municipal solid waste in landfill in 1995. That was down to 42% in 2012 and to 21% in 2014. We are going in the right direction and moving away from landfill. The number of landfill sites has reduced from 125 at one point to five commercially accepting waste last year.

The education piece about what goes into what bin is critical in respect of educating the consumer about what happens. It is also important to realise that some of the messaging is a little confused. People were talking for a while about a free green bin, but it was never free. The packaging waste collected by waste operators gets a subvention from Repak. Every tonne of household waste packaging collected yields €65 to the waste collector from Repak. It was always the case that it cost. That is how the green bin was dealt with previously. However, when the material now has a zero or negative value and it is costing operators to move it, something else has to change in that regard. That is important information to try to convey to the general public, to make people aware that it costs to collect and move this material. Somewhere along the way we have to ensure that the materials being collected in that area are as clean and uncontaminated as possible. That will only help the operators as they are trying to move the material on to the next phase.