Mattie McGrath (Tipperary, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In February 2016, I called on the then Minister with responsibility for the environment, Deputy Alan Kelly, who never showed his face in the Chamber tonight, to immediately suspend the introduction of increases in the cost of recycling household waste after he signalled at the time that he was set to approve a move that would have seen an additional per-kilo cost, which would have been passed on to families. He was a Labour Party representative and one would wonder where he came from and all that the Labour Party did over the years regarding charges.

He did the same with the tyre industry and got away with it. Everyone has been fleeced, there is €3 or €4 on each car tyre. At the time I said that if the then Minister, Deputy Kelly, was as creative in finding ways to address the homelessness crisis as he had been in creating extra charges for households, we might actually have got somewhere but he did not do anything there either. We know the answer he got from the electorate.

At the time, a one year review was put in place and now we are talking about another six months. The ball is in the Minister's court now. He is suggesting a watchdog and Deputy Dooley is agreeing with it. I know it is Independence Day in America where they talk about garbage. It is a garbage day. I hope this dog has teeth so that it can get into this garbage and he can chew on it and it will not choke him because I do not believe there is any kind of equal playing field here. People want to recycle, to reuse, they want to be prudent about their waste, but we are not allowing them. I am all for private enterprise and I salute it, and would like to mention one person, Pat Maher of Kedrah in Cahir who did a lot of good work in that area. He met an untimely death recently, dying suddenly as many do. Many others are unscrupulous and want to screw householders and they will do that. It is up to the Minister to put some kind of cap on these providers. It was passed on to him from the last Minister. He has it in his remit and we expect him to do something for it. A watchdog will be toothless. It will not be much good to anyone. We have plenty of regulators. We have one for business. There is a company shedding jobs in Tipperary next week. The competition regulator looked at it. They are toothless and useless and fruitless. They must look after the people.

The people want to pay and have a service and want to reuse and recycle. Like Deputy Joan Collins, I know community workers and members of tidy towns committees. We are all going around, sometimes trying to watch people out fly-tipping by night. We try to help local authorities. The amount of dumping is increasing because access to tip heads is gone and then there are charges. It is not a level playing field. We need to start at the schools so that we have the young people on board. Mol an oige agus tiocfaidh sí. We have started there and they are good. It is the older people and fly-by-night cowboys, some of them in criminal gangs, who are taking waste away, cleaning up houses for elderly women and dumping it at the side of the road, leaving county councils and volunteers to pick it up. There is a lot of work to be done to clean up the House here before the Minister starts penalising ordinary workers, not to mention the sick. There is a paltry agreement there for those who are incontinent and use nappies. There is a lot of work to be done here. It needs consultation. The Government has to get it right. We do not want another debacle like the one on water.

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