Leo Varadkar (Dublin West, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I was here when the Deputy introduced the Bill. I have not had the chance to read it yet. We will certainly consider it when it is brought to the floor of the House. I think Deputy Ryan will agree with what we are trying to achieve here. First, we want to reward people who recycle, reuse, compost and reduce their waste. It is not right that somebody who does not do those things should pay the same as somebody who does. We want to make sure people who do the right thing by their community and by the environment, and who reuse, reduce, recycle and compost pay less than those who do not. That is a part of the reason for the move away from flat charges to the pay-by-lift or pay-by-weight arrangement, which already exists in at least half the country.

We also want to make it easier for people to do the right thing and make the right choices. That is why it will now be a requirement to provide the brown bin in any population centre of more than 500. That will be in place quite soon.

In addition, the Minister is looking at introducing large-scale recycling bins outside supermarkets to reduce waste at source in order that people who buy things in a supermarket would be able to dispose of the packaging inside or outside it. For a start, that would be of benefit to them in reducing their waste, but, second, it would make supermarkets and manufacturers think twice about the packaging they use if it went straight back to them and never even managed to make it to somebody's home.

We will also introduce a new scheme to manage end-of-life vehicles to stop and reduce the dumping of vehicles. We will also launch a new scheme to manage waste tyres which we will believe will help to tackle the widespread dumping of used tyres, in country areas in particular.

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