Kevin Humphreys (Dublin South East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

The Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government, Deputy Alan Kelly, is overseas and the Minister of State at the Department, Deputy Paudie Coffey, was unable to come to the House owing to a family bereavement. I apologise on behalf of both Ministers for their absence.

I am pleased to provide an update on the establishment of a producer responsibility initiative, PRI, for waste tyres. As part of the review of the producer responsibility initiative, the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government commissioned a major review of the waste tyre sector. Published in November 2013, this report concluded that the current system is not functioning as intended, with a lack of basic information, poor structure and poor environmental outcomes in the form of large stockpiles of waste tyres, and a substantial proportion of waste tyres unaccounted for. In addition, the taxpayer often pays twice for the treatment of waste tyres, first, through the application of an existing fee at the point of purchase and, second, to support local authority clean-up operations when waste tyres are dumped. The report also identified significant non-compliance among those with responsibilities under the current waste tyre regulations.

To address these significant shortcomings, the Department has been working, in full consultation with all parts of the tyre industry, to assist it in putting in place a system of producer responsibility, in line with similar systems that apply to other sectors, to provide for the collection, sorting and management of the waste they produce in an environmentally sound and effective manner. This is in line with the polluter pays principle, a firmly established feature of both European and domestic waste policy and legislation. The implementation of the new scheme will require an overhaul of existing structures, which the Government believes can be achieved without either distorting the tyre market in lreland, encouraging customers to buy tyres outside the jurisdiction or causing widespread job losses in the sector. Moreover, such a scheme can be established without introducing new costs and instead by effectively formalising the existing charge that is already applied to almost all tyre purchases.

Arising from the work of the tyres working group, the Department received proposals for the future management of waste tyres from the Independent Tyre Wholesalers & Retailers Association, ITWRA, and the Irish Tyre Industry Association, ITIA. Having considered these proposals in detail, the Minister recently informed all sections of the tyre industry of his decision to establish a full producer responsibility initiative scheme for waste tyres.

The initiative will comprise a number of features.

There will be single compliance scheme for end-of-life tyres to be operated by Repak, the option to "self-comply" under the regulations will be ended and the existing recycling charge will be formalised into a visible environmental management charge to protect the consumer and to put an end to the taxpayer being obliged to pay on the double. The level of this charge will be set by the Department and reviewed in two years. As part of the detailed design of the scheme, the Department is considering, in consultation with the tyre and waste industry, whether the funding model is predicated upon a front-loaded or back-loaded model. In addition, there will be a full audit, registration and reporting component, a so-called "black box", with a role for the WEEE Register Society. The new regime, including enforcement and compliance measures, is to be underpinned by a robust legislative base, including fixed penalty notices for certain breaches.

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