Ciarán Cannon (Galway East, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

The Department of Communications, Climate Action and Environment is continuing the work of developing, with a number of stakeholders, a mechanism to provide a €75 support for persons with lifelong or long-term medical incontinence to help meet the average annual cost of disposing of medical incontinence products. Unfortunately, this process has taken far longer than originally envisaged. This delay is due to a number of issues. In particular, data protection issues have arisen since the introduction of the general data protection regulation, GDPR. The proposal relates to persons with lifelong or long-term medical incontinence. As the Deputy is aware, any information that relates to the physical health of a person is sensitive personal data and must be treated very carefully. I understand, however, that there is a commitment to introducing a support, as soon as practically possible, in conjunction with relevant agencies and stakeholders.

As outlined by the Deputy and as announced in mid-2017, mandatory per kilogram charging was not introduced for bin collection. Instead, a range of charging options were allowed, which encourage householders to reduce and separate their waste and provide flexibility to waste collectors to develop various service price offerings that suit different household circumstances. As a community, we need to keep our focus on the prevention and segregation of waste to protect our environment and to make the transition to a resource efficient and circular economy. We need to ensure that we are compliant with the targets set under EU waste legislation. This includes the new ambitious target of reducing the level of landfilling of municipal waste to less than 10% by 2035. It is important to be clear that, as a country, we have no spare landfill capacity for the disposal of household waste. The ban on flat-rate fees was necessary to incentivise householders further to recycle and compost more and to send less waste to landfill.

To assist householders, the Department has invested €3 million in education and awareness in what goes into the recycling bin and how to use the brown bin effectively. A household waste collection price monitoring group, PMG, was established in 2017 to monitor pricing developments for household waste collection services during the phasing out of flat-rate fees. The PMG has considered 13 months of data to date. While fluctuations in prices and service offerings have been observed, the overall trend is relative price stability.

The Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, recently concluded a study on the operation of the household waste collection market. It made three main recommendations, which are to review the existing national waste policy; in that context, to establish an economic regulator for household waste collection; and to ensure that all the State's resources are co-ordinated to deliver optimal outcomes for this market. The CCPC report, combined with the ongoing work of the PMG and the finalisation of the European circular economy waste and plastics legislation framework, will inform the development of a future national waste management policy, including our environmental goals. Notwithstanding all that progress on the waste management front, there is, unfortunately, further work to be done on delivering that €75 support raised by the Deputy. It is intended, however, to progress this issue as a matter of absolute urgency in conjunction with all the relevant agencies and stakeholders.

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