Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)

I note that the Green Party motion makes typically uninformed reference to the recently published Forfás study on waste management. Deputy Harkin, who left the House immediately after making her contribution, made equally ill-informed commentary. The study is interesting because it is a culmination of months of research into international waste management services. The report acknowledges that it is difficult to obtain up-to-date and readily comparable statistics in the area of waste management. It demonstrates that fact in the report. Deputy Quinn should note these are additional comments in my script which I make to illustrate the point about the inaccuracy of the comments made. The report further demonstrates that fact by making comparisons between 2005 figures for Ireland and 1995 figures for New Zealand. It is not to fault Forfás but to make the point that comparable data on waste management are incredibly difficult to get. Not only does Forfás recognise this, the European Environmental Agency, EEA, has also mentioned that reality. One of the major problems is that Ireland defines waste in a way different from other member states. One of the things that arises when we talk about a per capita figure is the inclusion of certain types of municipal and other waste as well as domestic waste in our statistics.

The report acknowledges at several points — there are disclaimers on pages 8 and 9, if I remember rightly — that data from different countries are not always strictly comparable. The problem is accepted at EU level where efforts are being made to improve the consistency and the quality of waste generation data. It is important to make this point because the arguments that have been made in this House are facetious in that they are based on a poor reading, to say the least, of the Forfás report. What exactly does the Forfás study tell us?

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