Richard Bruton (Dublin Bay North, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

First, Deputy Smith would know what was happening if she bothered to attend the Dáil the other night when these issues were being debated. Deputy Smith was marked absent when decisions were being made and when the position that was going to be introduced was being explained. It is a matter of shedding crocodile tears now when these decision have been taken when she does not bother to fulfil her responsibility, come in and deal with these issues.

The truth is that we have a problem with waste. That is the nature of this problem. Deputy Smith's party is a party that talks about taking our global responsibilities seriously. If we want to respond to the challenges of climate change, the problems of global waste and the impact it is having on resource use in our world, then we have to change behaviour. We have to see people who deal with waste in their normal daily lives changing the way they do that. That has to happen in businesses but it also has to happen in homes. What we have at the moment is that many homes do not segregate or try to minimise the amount of waste. The Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment, Deputy Naughten, indicated that €700 worth of food is discarded every year by the average household.

We are trying to achieve a situation whereby behaviour is changing but at the same time protect people who might be vulnerable. That is what is happening here. The system applies to half of households in the country already. Customers have an incentive system based on either a charge per lift or a charge per weight. That will now apply to all households. As a result, there will be an incentive for people to minimise waste and to use the three principles of good waste management: reduce, reuse and recycle.

As Deputy Smith probably knows, we have a real problem with contamination of the waste streams. Elements are put into segregated waste - whether into the green bins or black bins - that are not supposed to be contaminated by food products. If that segregation does not happen right then we create a major problem for the environment. Deputy Smith would be the first to complain if there was a dump provided and there were foul smells as a result of the system not being applied right.

What we are trying to do is change behaviour, but we are also protecting people. There will be an oversight of price monitoring to ensure that there is no gouging of consumers by abuses of this system.

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