Ivana Bacik (Dublin Bay South, Labour) | Oireachtas source

I welcome the opportunity to debate the Circular Economy, Waste Management (Amendment) and Minerals Development (Amendment) Bill, which Labour is glad to support. As the Minister of State said, the Bill aims to shift Ireland's consumption patterns from a take-make-waste linear model to the more sustainable pattern of production and consumption with the aim of reducing and minimising waste and thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions. It is a very welcome move.

In a circular economy, as we know, waste and resource use are minimised and the use and value of products and materials are maintained for as long as possible so that when a product reaches the end of its life, its parts are used again and again to create further useful and productive products instead of being discarded, an all-too familiar pattern which we have been hearing about. It is hard for many of us to fathom the quantity of waste that is produced worldwide. Most of us probably do not like to think about waste. Naturally it is distasteful even to reflect on the amount of waste we in our own households produce - the non-productive producing of waste. It is hard to visualise it; it is not something we like to think about or talk about. It is out of sight and out of mind in many cases. However, clearly we need to address this issue of waste. It was brought to my attention very graphically on a recent visit I made to the Covanta waste incineration plant in my constituency in the Poolbeg Peninsula. I was confronted with literally a mountain of human-produced waste, mostly domestic but also corporate. That was a wake-up call. It has quite a profound effect to be confronted with the visible manifestation of our waste and our wasteful habits. I very much welcome the Bill because it seeks to tackle that issue which we all-too often do not like to think about, talk about or even debate in political circles.

I want to speak about different aspects of the Bill that I welcome. On the use of CCTV, in respect of section 20 of the Bill I welcome the introduction of measures to detect and deter illegal dumping and littering by empowering local authorities to use GDPR-compliant technologies to detect and prevent unsightly and illegal dumping and littering among other measures. We in Labour support this measure first proposed by my colleague Senator Mark Wall in the Seanad, through the Local Government (Use of CCTV in Prosecution of Offences) Bill 2021 which he introduced last year with a view to addressing the difficulty local authorities have in addressing illegal dumping.

I should say that years ago, as a practitioner in criminal defence in the District Courts, it was always quite a memorable experience to hear the local litter wardens bringing their prosecutions and giving evidence to the court of how they had to go through bags to pick out envelopes and other materials that could identify the relevant offenders so that they could bring forward the prosecutions. It is a very cumbersome and very difficult task to prosecute in these cases. I welcome the initiative that has been taken here.

It is something that has been brought to our minds more because of the pandemic-related restrictions. The travel restrictions imposed over the last couple of years have meant that many people who might have exercised in gyms or leisure centres were instead exercising outdoors locally. It really brought home to many of us the realisation that so much environmental vandalism is caused by fly tippers and litterers in urban and rural settings alike. In some areas illegal dumping has caused really serious erosion and other problems. It can be found everywhere not just in remote rural areas but in the main streets of our cities and throughout our constituencies. Cleaning up the mess comes at a cost. It is not only creating an unsightly but in some cases hazardous environment. Senator Wall has given me the estimate that across 31 local authorities in the State, the cost of clearing up litter and illegally dumped materials may be as much as €90 million per year which is enormous. This is without considering the enormous voluntary effort put in by community clean-up groups which operate nationwide. I go out with my own group, the Friends of the Grand Canal, on the first Saturday every month. I know there are also local voluntary clean-up groups across my constituency in Portobello, Kimmage, Donnybrook, Terenure, Rathgar, Sandymount, Ringsend and Irishtown. These are volunteers who go out every week and do tremendous work, keeping their areas clean.

Dublin City Council and the local authorities generally, of course, also do a great deal of work. A number of constituents in my area have been very concerned at the removal of public bins in heavy footfall areas such as beside Charlemont Luas stop thereby contributing to a resurgence of illegal dumping and littering. We need to ensure the adequate supply of litter bins and that the councils are engaging in regular collection. We also need to support local community groups like the ones I have mentioned, which have taken such an interest in and put in such an effort to keep local areas clean. We are very lucky that there is such a voluntary effort going into clean-ups across the country. It shows the need to address illegal dumping and littering, which is a serious issue.

The aspect of the Bill that has received most focus is the reduction in single-use items at sections 11 to 14, inclusive. There has been some good collaboration on waste measures in the past between Labour and the Green Party. During the last Dáil, there was a joint venture between my colleague Deputy Sherlock and the now MEP Grace O'Sullivan with whom I worked in the Seanad. Deputy Sherlock and Grace O'Sullivan MEP worked together on the Bill to prohibit certain products containing plastic microbeads. That was another important measure brought forward to address single-use items, in particular plastic, and the enormous challenge plastic waste constitutes.

Following extensive debate and engagement with the previous Government that Government agreed to pass its own legislation to ban the manufacture or placing on the market of any water-soluble personal care cleaning product containing microplastics or microbeads. The engagement leading to the passage of that legislation represents the sort of red-green or green-red politics that I believe in. It is also a collaborative and constructive approach to politics, understanding the connectedness of the climate and biodiversity crises and indeed the crisis and challenges in dealing with waste.

I ask the Minister of State to engage with his colleague at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage to advance further regulatory measures dealing with plastic waste in particular, both at domestic and EU level because we are all conscious of the significant amount of microplastic material detected specifically in marine life. The logical natural progression of banning these toxic microplastics is that we would now seek to phase out single-use plastics altogether. The Minister of State referred to the levy that was imposed on plastic bags which was controversial when it was first introduced. Because it has now become so embedded in our national culture, we often forget that the topic actually dominated phone-in talk-radio shows for weeks at the time it was sought to be introduced, as indeed did the introduction of smoke-free areas and so on. We then adjust and move on, recognising the enormous benefit to us all, our society and our country that these measures represent.

Now that society has adjusted to the plastic bag levy, we all bring our own shopping bags to supermarkets without even thinking twice. Similarly, we need to move to a situation where we regard it as natural that we have phased out single-use plastic.

I listened to the coverage of the Bill on "Morning Ireland" this morning. Those interviewed in vox pops were shocked to learn that about 200 million disposable coffee cups are sent to landfill or incineration every year.

Again reflecting on my experience of visiting the Covanta site, we saw a huge amount of single-use coffee cups in that mountain of waste sent to be incinerated and a huge volume of other recyclable materials. While we have had very strong uptake of recycling and very positive figures on increased use of recycling and of green bins, there is still too much recyclable material going into incineration, which is something we need to address.

It is, of course, positive to see the move away from landfill, which the Minister of State addressed, and I have certainly seen those impressive statistics. However, we need to do more to develop the potential in the waste to energy sector, for example, through the rolling out of district heating systems, which, again, in my own area have been promised for a long time for Ringsend. I see the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth, looking somewhat rueful about this. It is an issue on which there has been far too much delay. We need to see this moved on as a matter of urgency. Other European countries have well established waste to energy programmes. District heating is the obvious use of waste to energy. It an obvious application where waste to energy can really make a huge difference and can really improve people's quality of life and address issues around the very concerning rises in fuel and energy costs.

It is very positive, therefore, to see these measures brought into the Bill around single-use items, disposable coffee cups in particular, on which there has been a real focus. To be very local for a moment, it is very welcome to see signs up in the canteen in Leinster House suggesting people use their own cup rather than taking a disposable one to the coffee machine. We have a responsibility to lead by example. I never miss the opportunity to say that one area where we have really failed to lead by example here in Leinster House is on encouragement of cycling. As the co-convenor with Senator Garvey of the Oireachtas cyclists group, we have been pushing for many years to try to get decent bike parking facilities in Leinster House. It is something I will again be in contact with the Minister of State about because we need to be seen to encourage more Oireachtas Members and staff to cycle to work. We are not sending out a signal that we are a welcoming space for cyclists with the very poor provision of bike parking facilities and with absolutely no covered bike parking facilities, while cars are parked everywhere, often on the lawn at the back of Leinster House. This is where we need to be leading by example, as we are on encouraging the use of keep cups or people's own cups.

I want to move to another point on which this Bill could do more or where we may need to see additional legislation, and that is on the right to repair. While this Bill, in a very welcome way, will assist in shifting behaviour among producers and the general population, we also need to do more to shift the balance of power from manufacturers and corporations back to citizens and ordinary people. It is often difficult to make sustainable choices. We heard Deputy Martin Kenny speak about the difficulties with repairing products that break down and the fact that, in too many cases, those products are simply disposed of and new products are purchased. This relatively new concept of a right to repair is one we need to see enshrined in law. It would make a huge difference in reducing waste while also addressing a power imbalance between consumers and manufacturers, and putting more money in people’s pockets.

In March 2020, the European Commission adopted its new circular economy action plan, which aims to establish a strong and coherent product policy framework to transform European consumption patterns and to avoid the production of waste in the first place. As part of this process, the Commission looks to embed a right to repair in EU consumer and product policies. This sort of legislation was strongly recommended, I note, by several of the submissions to the public consultation underpinning this Bill. It is an important part of a circular economy plan. The idea of right to repair was also echoed in debates which have taken place in the Joint Committee on Environment and Climate Action over recent months. This Bill could do more on the issue.

I have already drafted a Labour Party Bill to enshrine a right to repair.I should say it was inspired by the writing of Karlin Lillington in The Irish Times, speaking about how the right to repair has taken on a very strong force in US politics and US environmental activism and we have seen this coming forward. This legislation would include measures to stop waste and tackle the cost of living by requiring manufacturers, particularly of digital and electronic equipment, to make available repair information to consumers and to break the monopoly on repair by the manufacturer. The legislation is urgently needed, not just to tackle corporate power and power imbalance and to break that monopoly, but also to crack down on what we might call planned obsolescence, that business strategy where the obsolescence of a product is built into it from its conception by the manufacturer to the point where we all think a washing machine should only have a few years lifespan. It is, of course, done with a view to compelling consumers or creating a culture in which consumers feel compelled to continue to invest in more and more new products. We are calling for a comprehensive right to repair to be enshrined in legislation to empower consumers and to create a market for repairable products and repair services.

I am conscious that, as is the case with many of us, my area of Dublin 8 has a number of small local phone shops where people can bring their smartphone or whatever make of mobile phone they have if the screen has cracked – in a household with teenagers, there are often many incidents of phone screens being cracked. The small local shop will fix the phone screen, usually in a matter of minutes, but, of course, if that is done, it generally means the phone is no longer guaranteed by the manufacturer because the manufacturer has retained the monopoly of repair. That is exactly the sort of practice which right to repair legislation seeks to tackle.

I believe it should be an important component of any circular economy legislation to enshrine that right to repair, to re-empower consumers and to break that cycle of obsolescence which generates so much waste and which will continue to do so unless we tackle it. We must go beyond the current EU directives and EU measures and extend that right to include not just digital electronic equipment, albeit that is a very important area, but also to include smaller household devices and to empower consumers generally. In the spirit of our previous engagement with the Government on the CCTV issue and on the prohibition of microbeads, I would hope the Minister of State will work with me and my party colleagues to see this principle placed on a legislative footing.

More generally, we very much welcome the concept of a circular economy. We in the Labour Party have put forward the important concept that national economic planning and climate targets must be in sync because they are two sides of the same coin. We need to ensure that any economic strategy takes account of and builds in environmental strategy and regional job generation to ensure we become the renewable superpower that we can be, and to break the hold of fossil fuel oligarchs and magnates, which I know is very much in all of our minds at present.

It would also, of course, ensure that climate would be at the heart of government. While the Green Party clearly has a very strong commitment on climate action, the offices of the Taoiseach, the Minister for Finance and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform are held by the other two Government parties, so we need to see that cross-party and cross-government strategising on the economy and on the environment together.

I want to mention Part 5 of the Bill, which is very important. It will end the issuing of new licences for exploration and mining of coal, lignite and oil shale, a welcome and important component of the move to consolidate a policy of reducing reliance on fossil fuels. Again, this is a topic that many of us have been speaking about. I expressed yesterday to the Taoiseach my wish that we need to take every step to avoid the horrific war in Ukraine having consequences on climate targets and environmental action. However, it may well do, because we are certainly seeing this horrific war, this brutal invasion of Ukraine, having enormous knock-on effects on food security, fuel and energy security and the cost of living for all of us, not just in Ireland but across the world and, in particular, in developing countries that were so reliant on Ukrainian wheat imports as much as anything. We know the war has already had enormous consequences. It may pose a threat to the limited but hard-fought for gains achieved at COP26 last year and it may pose obstacles to the reaching of our own climate targets. However, we also know that the consequences of failing to keep global temperatures below 1.5°C this century will be catastrophic and that any further slippage could have unthinkable results for humanity as we face this existential crisis. All of us are conscious of our fortune in being able to stand here in a peaceful corner of Europe to debate climate issues as the war rages in Ukraine and as people in Mariupol, Kyiv and elsewhere endure horrific bombardment but, undoubtedly, the climate crisis is that existential crisis that confronts us all and that we need to take more urgent action on.

I very much welcome the Bill. I would like to see more on the right to repair and I hope to bring forward amendments on Committee Stage on that topic.

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