Joe McHugh (Donegal North East, Fine Gael)

I will be brief. I appreciate the opportunity to speak on the Bill and I welcome the spirit of the Bill. There is no doubt that the demand for precious and scrap metal has gone through the roof.

We must look at the positives and the silver lining of that when we look around the countryside, where there is no such thing as a scrapped car lying around because of the demand. It is important to note that there are legitimate scrap dealers working within the law, whether at local authority or national level. Therefore we should not consider these people cowboys or consider that illegal scrap dealers encompass this group, as intimated by Deputy Mattie McGrath.

This debate needs to be developed as it is very restricted. I understand the Minister's concerns and reservations in that regard. If we consider the land mass of Ireland, we have an acreage of 17.4 million acres. However, scrap metal is not restricted to land. We have significant underground cabling under and on the sea bed. Therefore, we need an all-encompassing strategy to examine the possibility of retrieving some of the scrap copper cabling on the sea bed. It is possible there are approximately 220 million acres and perhaps we should look at the possibility of a public private partnership to become involved in that. I accept the Minister's reservations, but I call for the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources to work closely with the Minister for Justice and Equality on the possibility of a public private partnership between private entrepreneurs, some of whom have approached me, who are interested in working with the Government to retrieve some of this cabling.

Obviously, some cable is owned by companies, so we will have to consider an identification process. I would like to acknowledge and compliment some of the staff in the Department of Communications, Energy and Natural Resources who feel this is a good idea. However, there is no legislation on this area or around the possibility of retrieving some of the vast quantities of copper on or under the sea bed. This is an area where the State would possibly be in a win-win situation as an initiative on this could help create employment and help recover a precious metal, such as copper that has been used for the telecommunications industry. We are living in a time when we need solutions. We are also living in a time when many people have the energy and will to do new things to try to get us out of the mess we are in. This is a possible solution. Also, at a local level there are people who are interested in working with Government on this. I ask the Government to respond to these people who want to get involved in this business but who do not want to work on a purely private speculative basis but to work with the State. This could be a model of best practice for raising revenue for the State and creating employment.

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