Willie Penrose (Westmeath, Labour)

The Department has some of the best officials in the public service. We have paid tribute to them previously and I pay tribute to them again. We get a great service from them. There is greater ingenuity in his Department in terms of seeing issues from a different perspective than in many others. The Department officials would see the benefit of this move.

Often the waiver schemes applicable to two persons living within a quarter of a mile of each other are different because they are administered by different local authorities. Some local authorities provide a waiver system and some do not, while others provide a tag system where a person is entitled to a number of free bin tags.

The Department is probably one of the best innovators in the administration of schemes. I suppose the Department administers hundreds of schemes, far more than any other Department. I realise the Minister would say that his officials are loaded down with consolidating Social Welfare Acts, to which we add every year, and with matters such as the Citizens Information Bill. It takes the Department a long time to get to the bottom of all that work. The Department's officials should be paid additional moneys for all the work they do in what is one of the more difficult areas because every day we find an issue, land it on their desk and ask them to use their discretion to deal with it as best they can.

Someone must tackle this issue eventually. If I recall correctly the presentation made at the Joint Committee on Social and Family Affairs, officials from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government met officials from the Department of Social and Family Affairs. The officials from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government stated that it is up to each local authority to administer the system. That is no use. If pensioners are not gaining the benefit of a waiver, some of the few bob the Minister passes on to them is being subsumed back into the system while their neighbours across a local authority boundary a couple of hundred yards away, or on the far side of the road, may be eligible for a waiver. What is important is the uniformity of the principle of a waiver system which takes cognisance of people's income, particularly those who are dependent on social welfare to meet their basic necessities of life.

The Minister and his Department work extremely hard in that area, but it is not beyond the officials' ingenuity to draw up a solution. Obviously, it would involve a little joined up thinking between the Minister's Department and the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, and the representative managers' association representing the local authorities.

We, in County Westmeath, have a fairly good waiver system where those eligible get a number of free bin tags. The tag achieves another objective because the more one recycles, the less refuse one must put out for collection. If one is good at recycling, the tags might be almost sufficient to cover the year's collection. There is an in-built incentive to act properly, taking cognisance of the environmental concern to reduce, reuse and recycle, and to achieve a national environmental objective.

This is an important amendment and Deputy Stanton must be saluted for tabling it. I support the idea in principle. While I acknowledge it cannot happen overnight, perhaps it is a matter the Minister could examine. The Minister is giving social welfare recipients what he hopes is enough for them to get by from week to week, but if they must address a cost such as this, it eats into their level of disposable income.

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