Brian Stanley (Laois-Offaly, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

As regards amendment No. 13, I heard what the Minister of State said about pay-by-weight being an effective way of reducing waste volumes. There is a concern that the collection of green waste will continue to be charged for. Green waste has a value, so we should examine how it is being used in other countries with a similar population profile to this State. For example, New Zealand, which has a large agricultural sector, has revolutionised the use of waste.

In recent years, we have been moving away from peat harvesting, although perhaps a little too quickly in some cases because of the EU directive on the preservation of bogs. Some bogs do need to be preserved, but there is an argument about whether we should try to preserve bogs where there is not much left to preserve or that would be impossible to preserve. On the other hand, every household is producing organic waste that has the potential to replace or supplement peat by generating compost. We have the landmass in which to do it. The Cul na Móna plant near Portlaoise, which is on the N7-N8 junction, has thousands of acres that could be used. Why is the Department not using that facility? The Government should involve other Departments, such as the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation, under Deputy Bruton.

Green waste takes up space and one cannot deal with it in town centres or up a side street. We rightly support waste segregation and must encourage more people to separate waste. In addition, I try to reduce what we produce. When I began to hand back boxes and bags in local shops, people looked at me as if I was a strange character, but now everybody is doing it. Similarly, when I started bringing my own shopping bags people thought it looked a bit funny, but it is now the done thing.

There is a consensus that people's habits can change quickly. In the late 1990s, I was part of an environmental group that was trying to ramp up awareness of this issue. When we did presentations on it, it was said that Irish people would not go to the trouble of segregating and recycling, but they have done so. We are now one of the most successful states in Europe in this regard, but we need to go a lot further. Segregation is great and we need to drive it on.

The Minister and Ministers of State should push the issue of reduction. There are major opportunities to reduce the volumes we are producing, particularly of harmful waste. I referred earlier to drinks containers and, while I know it cannot be done overnight, there is nothing to stop us from having a universal container that can be continually reused.

These amendments cover the use of civic centres or other collection points for segregating waste. Some counties have very few such centres, although County Laois has approximately 49. That means that every parish and village has one, while the larger towns have a few. Such collection points provide an opportunity for people to recycle a lot of waste.

Amendment No. 13 refers to litter from vehicles carrying waste, which is a good point, although the amendment falls down in other respects. I live within 100 yards of an orbital route used by many vehicles going to a major landfill site. Unfortunately, many vehicles carrying waste to that site drop bags, so they must be picked up either by local people or by local authority staff. Such vehicles should be required to cover and secure their waste loads properly. As I understand it, gardaí have the same powers as a litter warden, so they should be vigilant. Where waste is hanging off the back of a lorry or trailer, they should make the driver secure the load by covering it properly before proceeding.

Some people may compact household waste to make it smaller in volume, but it must still be weighed, which takes away the incentive to compact. In addition, it creates a problem for low-income households consisting of large families. A one-parent family with four children - for example, somebody who has lost a partner through death or divorce - is on the princely sum of about €307. An adult and four children will create a substantial volume of waste, so the waste collection bill becomes a challenge for them on top of other costs, yet no allowance is made for this.

The programme for Government contains a commitment to introduce a waste waiver scheme for collection charges, but I have not yet seen it. The Minister of State said it would come in over the next couple of weeks.

I have raised this at different points over the past four years, particularly on the Order of Business and with parliamentary questions. The initial answers were that an interdepartmental group was looking at it but the last time I asked the answer was that it had basically gone off the radar and the Department was no longer looking at it. The Minister of State said it could be in place within a matter of weeks so can she confirm what will be done with it before the summer recess? If a single parent with four children and €306 in household income is in a local authority house and pays €65 in rent under the differential rents scheme, it brings her income down to approximately €240. She has to do everything, including feeding herself and the children, paying the water charge, paying for schoolbooks to send the children back to school and the ongoing utility costs such as electricity and heating, as well as repairing everything that needs to be repaired, for that money. One would want to be a very good manager of money to do that. One would want to be Houdini.

It has become more difficult for such people to get an exceptional needs payment from the community welfare officer. One would want to take the Lord down from the cross and get him to plead one's case to get an exceptional needs payment from the CWO these days. If we adopt payment by weight and penalise these people further, we will put an unmerciful burden on the backs of those people. That is not the way forward.

In the North in the past year, local authorities got money from the waste collection companies for the waste they collected so some kind of income stream came back. I was told about it by colleagues in Stormont and I must find out more about it. The Minister of State said she could not deal with working conditions in these companies because it was an industrial relations matter but it is a sad state of affairs that people working in the waste collection industry are poorly paid, work in poor conditions and are put to the pin of their collars trying to do the huge collection rounds they are given in the shortest period of time. They are given more and more work with more and more streets to be covered and more and more bins to be collected.

In the housing estate in which I live, there are four separate collectors driving in and out. What kind of a carry-on is that? We have spoken about reducing our carbon footprint but these are huge trucks with 250 horsepower engines and all they are doing is collecting a few bins. It makes no sense whatsoever in terms of environmental policy. Hopefully we will come to the Climate Change Bill soon because it is only when we take some small steps to bring some sanity to how we do business in this country that we will tackle the issue of climate change. It is beyond me that on the one hand the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government says we need to reduce our carbon footprint and we will be buying carbon credits while on the other hand the State puts local authorities into the position where several collection trucks burn up diesel, pollute the atmosphere and break up the roads. One large four-axle lorry came into the estate and damaged the kerbs, owing to it being in a hurry and just too big for the estate. There needs to be a bit of sanity which we do not have at the moment. Something needs to be put in place so that centres of population are serviced by civic centres. In my neck of the woods, there are a considerable number of civic amenity sites and recycling centres near community halls and elsewhere, though there is always room for more.

There is a race to the bottom in the industry and this needs to be dealt with. I hear that the minimum wage might be increased by €1 per hour. That is fair enough but the problem is that I have also heard it might be done in three instalments over a three-year period, which will mean 33c per hour extra for these people, many of whom are on the minimum wage, and it will not do much for them. It will be an increase of some €13 per week before USC is deducted so I appeal to the Minister to talk to those colleagues of hers who have responsibility for these things to address wages and working conditions.

Amendment No. 15 relates to the transfer of permits. We need to be careful with this for a number of reasons. Local authorities have now become the regulator, not the provider, and they are even moving out of landfill but they do not have an income stream from waste. The plastic bag levy comes back to them, however, and Deputy Murphy called on local authorities to use that income to provide recycling centres and drop-off points for recycled waste. If they do not do that, the Department and county councillors should find out how much they get back from the levy and demand it be used for the drop-off points referred to in these amendments. If we do not have drop-off points we will not be providing the opportunities for people to recycle their waste, particularly those living in multi-unit complexes and who do not have their own bins. Many people live in apartments and would appreciate recycling centres nearby to drop off and segregate waste but it would appear that some local authorities are not stepping up to the mark in this respect. The Government has a role in this but so do we, as elected representatives, and councillors are demanding that local authorities use the money they get to provide such centres.

There have been many casualties of the privatisation of waste collection. I believe if one has to pay for it, one should pay the local authority for it. One can see the difference on both sides of the Border. North of the Border waste is not dumped in bags, over gates and in gateways or shoved into corners in derelict sites around towns and villages. Here, if one is walking along country roads, what one sees is very revealing. After Christmas, when the growth on each side of the road recedes, one can see lots of bags and other things. We do not always see them while driving but when walking they are only too apparent. Rural constituents tell me all the time how they get up on a Sunday morning to bring in cattle, do jobs on the farm or just go up the road for a walk only to find the gateway at the far end of their house has been filled with rubbish from the night before, such as mattresses, bags of rubbish and so on. There is a myth that the people who do this are poor people on low incomes but if one watches the people being brought before the courts to be charged for these offences they do not all drive ten, 15 and 20-year-old vehicles but cars registered in 2014 or 2015, and I do not mean Micras or little Toyotas either.

Many of them are big vehicles. This needs to be clamped down on and we need to try to reduce the amount of illegal dumping. What is happening is shocking. Our party is very concerned about this issue and our councillors, in conjunction with the local authorities, are trying to get on top of the problem. One thing we want to do is ensure people are not picking up someone else's rubbish out of their gateways and laneways.

The Minister of State designates special areas of conservation. A natural heritage area has been designated between Portlaoise and Mountmellick. Thousands of tonnes of rubbish are being dumped in the laneways in that NHA. It is mountains of rubbish and there is no excuse for it. The sad part about it is that when one walks along this area, 80% of the rubbish can be recycled in the civic amenity centre half a mile away across the road. It can be recycled for €3. A person can drive in and recycle all the waste he or she has - a tonne of it - for €3. I know there is only so much Government can do and I recognise that every one of us, even if we were never in this House, as a private citizen has a responsibility to ensure this does not happen and to try to stamp it out. It is done by a small minority but if one household is dumping two bags of rubbish a week, that is 104 bags a year. Some mess is created by 104 bags. Why they are dumping rubbish that can be recycled is beyond me. It is lazy, filthy, dirty and unfair to the majority who have to pick it up, be they members of a Tidy Towns committee or local residents. During Clean Up Laois Week, the local authority encourages local groups of people to get out and do it in rural and urban areas. Tens of tonnes of rubbish are gathered by people. Sometimes they come together informally in rural townlands and urban centres to pick up the rubbish. We need to get on top of the problem but this legislation does not do that. Legislation needs to be brought forward to strengthen what is there at the moment.

I gave the example of a one-parent family to illustrate my big concern about the pay by weight system but it could apply to a two-parent family as well. We need to bring an end to poverty and we need to start making things a bit more equal in this society, but the poorest people I have come across, the single parent with three or four children, are in a very tight corner. They perform the miracle of the loaves and fishes every week. We need to stop requiring that of them. It is not fair on them or their children. We have a responsibility in this House to speak up for them, whether in opposition or on the Government benches. However, the Minister of State has a particular responsibility not to put a heavier burden on them.

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