Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 19 April 2023

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine

Recycling Farm Plastics: Discussion

Photo of Paul DalyPaul Daly (Fianna Fail)
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I welcome Deputy Kerrane and wish Deputy Carthy the best in his new role. We have always had a very good working relationship here, politics aside, and I look forward to having a good working relationship with Deputy Kerrane also.

A few questions I had have already been asked so I will not rehash them, but I would like to tease the matter out a bit. Mr. Moloney broke down the tonnage into bales for effect. The equivalent of 18 million bales sounds good, but I would look at the flipside of that. There is the equivalent of 2 million bales unaccounted for, and that is in a year when the IFFPG collected 90%. It has to collect only 70% to be across the line and to meet its requirements. Mr. Moloney said 90% is 18 million bales. That leaves 10% out there that nobody seems to care about. We have the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications represented here. I am not mentioning at all whatever may be coming in illegally. If there is illegal trading, it will be possible to quantify only the amount of it that is captured or caught. We have no idea how much illegal trading is going on that is not being caught. Leaving that aside and not adding it to this sum, the IFFPG is quite happy, under the current arrangement and licence, to have, even when it has one of its better years and collects 90%, the equivalent of 2 million round bales of plastic out there unaccounted for. What is the plan, from the Department's point of view, thinking of the environment at large? How do the witnesses think that will be collected or recycled? Setting this up from day one and setting a target of 70% was certainly not very environmentally friendly. Is there a plan? The IFFPG can come in here and say it is doing a fantastic job and collecting 98% of what is collected, which sounds like it is collecting 98%, but if it is collecting only 98% of 90%, where does Mr. Moloney think the balance is going? What is the plan for the balance? I have a couple more questions.