Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

In respect of the circular economy, we have to move from launching interesting pilots to creating an admiralty, as someone else said. It is not an original quote but the concept is valid. Two thirds of what we put into our bin is in the wrong place. We are coming from very seriously off the pace.

I have a provocative question. Does success mean that there has to be commercial entry into this sector if we are to hit the levels we need in terms of material recovery, material reduction and reuse?

I see the vital importance of community initiative. How can we make this a commercial, successful thing instead of doing what is now commercially successful, which is to keep selling things as part of the take-make-waste approach?

I have another high-level question. Our guests have mentioned community engagement and consumer engagement. Is zero waste too much to now be loaded upon zero emissions or can we make them complementary and integrated? I ask because I think people are struggling. In a lot of countries across Europe, we have seen the reaction against zero emissions and the ending of fossil fuels. Are we trying to put another very heavy weight on this poor camel?

I was very interested to hear what our guests said about producer responsibilities, and how they have encouraged recycling over reuse and repair, and issued a warning about textiles, which I understood from the previous presentation is to come in on 1 January next year. What have we learned from the producer responsibility scheme? The scheme covers packaging, batteries, electronics, vehicles, tyres, farm plastics and tobacco filters, so they are a fair segment. There is talk about textiles and mattresses. I have no doubt the scheme will cover bikes, perhaps paint and God knows what else.

If this is the way to go, and one tries to change the market, so that producers have to think in a different way, where does the social enterprise sector fit in? Can arrangements be made with some of these extended producer responsibilities to create the space for a social enterprise dimension?

I would like our guests to explain the insurance and product liability issue a little bit more. What exactly is going wrong there? I ask because we heard in the last presentation that we have the longest product liability at six years. If people get things repaired by some of the community enterprises, it should not undermine that. The guests need to explain to us point by point the problem there.

If we were take our existing bring centres, or the top one in every county or the top profile of them, what would it take to move them from where they are to something along the lines of a rediscovery centre or something that could be scaled up? The issue is scaling up. I recognise the viability of social enterprise, which is the only scale at the moment and that is a real problem. I do not know whether we can scale up using the social enterprise model alone. How can we develop both together?