John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

——for which the four Dublin local authorities have statutory responsibility under the Waste Management Acts. As the procurement has been by way of a public private partnership, the role of my Department has been to certify that the procurement was conducted in accordance with public policy. The Department in a letter dated 14 September 2005 advised Dublin City Council which acts as lead authority for the project that having considered the submissions received in respect of the procurement process, there was no objection to the council proceeding to enter into contractual arrangements with the selected private partner. In the normal course this would have quickly ensued. However, due to a corporate restructuring on the side of the selected private partner, I am advised that it was not until 14 May 2007 that the project board which is chaired by Dublin City Council and supervises the project was in a position to sign off on the contractual arrangements in line with the process concluded in 2005.

The regulatory authorities will ultimately adjudicate on this project. That is their preserve. It is the duty of Government to set the legal and policy framework within which the public and private sectors can deliver an economically and ecologically efficient system of waste management. The Government's programme sets out how this can be better achieved. We do not start from scratch. I acknowledge that much has already been achieved in bringing our waste management infrastructure and services into the 21st century. I commend those local authorities which have led the way and, in particular, the tens of thousands who routinely take responsibility for the waste they generate. Leaving out the green bin or visiting the local bottle bank or recycling facility is now a matter of course for large numbers. There is no lack of willingness on the part of the public if they are provided with the means to properly deal with their waste. The introduction of pay-by-use charging systems has also provided an incentive for people to act responsibly.

There is already a significant commitment to developing a world class approach to waste management on the basis of the internationally accepted waste hierarchy. It is not to devalue these efforts to assert that the challenges we face demand even more of us. The programme for Government rededicates us to this goal. The EPA has already done some work in improving our ability to prevent waste arising in the first place. This effort must intensify. Waste prevention is at the top of the waste hierarchy and considerable changes are needed at all levels of society and in all sectors to achieve our goals for preventing and minimising waste. Similarly, in the area of recycling we must move much more rapidly in developing markets for recyclables. The EPA-led market development group will play a key role in that regard. This will be particularly important in a context in which we are making further significant progress in driving up our recycling rates. Simple measures such as more bottle banks and extending opening hours of recycling centres will play a role in this continuing improvement.

We have seen progress in developing producer responsibility initiatives. Ireland has been a leader in implementing the WEEE directive. We also have put in place initiatives dealing with farm plastics and end-of-life vehicles. I want to see greater engagement with the productive sector. One of the reasons behind the polluter pays principle is the need to ensure producer responsibility operates as an effective incentive for reducing waste generation and ensuring the reusability and recyclability of waste. We need to do much more to minimise the waste we have to deal with and the resultant demand for recovery and disposal infrastructure. In other words, we need a much greater focus on the upper tiers of the waste hierarchy where both the challenge and the environmental pay-off are greatest. It is easy to bury or burn and disposal technologies will continue to be necessary for some time but they must be seen as methods of last resort and their importance should diminish as we better develop our approaches to waste minimisation.

There is evidence that we are potentially capable of much greater. Already the EPA data show that we have achieved our national recycling target of 35% set for the year 2013. This is up from 9% in 1998 and eight years ahead of what was regarded as a very ambitious target, but maybe we need to increase the extent of our ambition. On the recycling of packaging waste, we also have a good story to tell, having already reached 60% of the EU target set for 2011, but even here we can do much better.

I acknowledge these achievements and the work of those whose efforts made them possible but I am determined to go further towards being a world leader in the drive for a recycling society. Ireland has led the way in tackling the scourge of plastic bags and environmental pollution from smoking. and we can do so again in the way we manage our waste. One could argue that we are limited only by the limit of our ambition. In the context of the commitments in the programme for Government I want to drive that ambition. I would prefer to see us falling short of world class ambitions than comfortably meeting less demanding ones. This should not be about scoring political points with soft achievements but about showing real leadership.

Progress on recycling has been greatly assisted by my Department's scheme of capital grants in support of local authority recycling facilities. A sum of €100 million has been allocated since 2002. In the context of the provisions in the national development plan I am determined to maintain this effort. I shall also further roll out, in the years immediately ahead, the recently established programme of financial assistance to local authorities to help remediate certain of the historic landfills which are a relic of the way we once dealt with our waste.

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