Mr. Kevin O'Donoghue:

Litter is an area that came into my sight last year and in new litter scheme we set up with the local authorities, we funded provision of solar compacting bins and that type of thing and changing some of the older infrastructure. We basically set aside €5 million this year to start to combat some of the difficulties found by local authorities. We have also changed the waste enforcement structures and have an enhanced waste enforcement regional lead authorities, WERLAs, for that in order that we are ensuring there is a minimum number of waste enforcement officers in each county. We will be looking to do the same with litter. We are trying, as best we can, to ensure local authorities have sufficient resources to deal with what they are being asked to do.

At the same time, a major part of our role is to ensure education and awareness for everybody in this State around the importance of leaving no trace and trying to take care of one's local area. We worked with MyWaste on the staycation messaging and on leaving no litter, as the economy started to reopen. It is important to reflect when we were in a lockdown scenario of 2 km to 5 km, the waste was still appearing. We were getting more calls pointing out what was there, but there was no increase in the waste being generated. It highlighted to all of us, to some surprise, at a time during when no one was travelling, that the waste and litter were not being generated by passing most motorists coming through one's county and throwing it out the window, but by each local authority area. It is being generated in everybody's locality.

We decided to tackle that as best we could through a more harmonised approach throughout the State and we are working with the waste collectors to try to ensure we have better provision of facilities and the materials people need, such as litter pickers or bags. We will work on whatever is necessary to support the Tidy Towns groups but much broader than that is a big education and awareness piece which needs to happen. We need to ensure the enforcement of the laws and fines are carried through and to try to get people back to supporting their local communities and ensuring they are not the cause of the littering issues other people in their communities are being asked to resolve.