Jan O'Sullivan (Limerick City, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to have this debate. The Labour Party is committed to the concept of paying by weight for refuse charges as an important contribution to the environment. I think Deputy Dooley said it earlier on, but there has been considerable progress in Ireland with regard to how we treat waste and how we reuse, separate and so on and paying by weight is a contribution to that effort. I compliment the Minister, Deputy Coveney, on the fact that he has moved quickly on the issue and has, in effect, dealt with the first two points in the motion by both meeting the representatives of the deliverers of the service and addressing the issue of preventing them from implementing the planned increases.

In response to Deputy Lahart, I am the spokesperson for the Labour Party in this area, which is why the former Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, is not here. In case there is any doubt that he is still the spokesperson, he was the Minister but I have been appointed as spokesperson and am here to speak on behalf of the Labour Party on this issue.

I also wish to defend the former Minister, Deputy Kelly, against the blanket accusations we have just heard. As stated by a couple of Deputies already, this goes right back to way before the former Minister, Deputy Kelly, became Minister. This was first put on the table in 2011 and the actions of the former Minister, Deputy Kelly, earlier this year were simply to bring in a statutory instrument to provide for the pay-by-weight system that had, in effect, been decided on already. Again, I think it was Deputy Dooley who fairly said that the former Minister did not anticipate that the providers of the service - the waste collectors - were going to abuse the statutory instrument by raising charges way above what anyone would have anticipated. It is only in the past few weeks that it became apparent that this was the intention of the providers of the service. In fairness to Deputy Alan Kelly, I am surprised he is not being blamed for the weather or the fact that Ireland did not score against Belgium in the European championship-----

See this speech in context