Richard Boyd Barrett (Dún Laoghaire, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

I learned a couple of things when I was in Palestine when I was about 18. First, I learned that Israel is an apartheid state and that we need to do something about it. While I was there, I was working in the desert growing tomatoes, melons and all sorts of other crops. An interesting point that has always stuck with me is that each morning when the farmers were producing the tomatoes for the European export market, we poured into big vats the contents of massive bags of chemicals whose purpose was to keep the tomatoes solid so they would still look good at the other end when transported vast distances to Europe. The nice tomatoes — beautiful tomatoes with no chemicals — were produced for the local market. They were absolutely gorgeous. They did not look exactly the same as the ones on the shelves here but they were the tasty ones. There were no chemicals in them at all.

I learned something else in Israel: the rotten melons produced by the Israeli farm were sent to Gaza. There is a very important lesson in that experience. It relates to the discussion Deputy Bríd Smith and I had with farmers the other day. The matter has been highlighted by the Ukraine crisis. We believed we were feeding the world but discovered we were not when the Ukraine crisis arose. We rear many cows and export them and many dairy-related products but we could be in danger of not being able to feed ourselves, or even the cows, because we do not grow enough grain, vegetables and other foods. That we import these products and that they are transported all across the world means more chemicals and plastic, the emission of more fumes, more waste and more destruction of the environment rather than diversifying agriculture to produce food locally so we do not need loads of chemicals and plastic packaging. Diversifying agriculture would give us food security, reduce waste and give a more certain existence to farmers and others, but we would have to support our farmers in doing so.

That is the logic of the way neoliberal capitalism operates. I know people do not like it when we use these slogans, but that is the truth. Capitalism specialises in the production of cheap products on massive scales for exports to the market, not for production for need at a local level. The consequences for the environment are disastrous. I will give another simple example. When I and the Ceann Comhairle were young, we used to get milk delivered by milkmen in glass bottles. We left the empty bottles out every day and they were reused over and over again. When I worked in the Netherlands, the same was done with beer bottles. When people bought Heineken or Amstel, they had to bring the bottles back to the shop where they bought them. We bought more and got money back when we brought the bottles back. The bottles were used over and over again. Then we got Tetra Pak, which involved massive amounts of carbon that are a complete waste of resources. That happened somebody was able to make money out of it. It was all about the commodification of these things rather than doing things in a rational way.

It is all very well talking about the circular economy, which I am in favour of, but I want to stress that we are letting loose the forces that are destroying the circular economy. We have to give local authorities the necessary staffing, resources and infrastructure required for a circular economy. The Minister of State knows this. In our area we do not have anything near like the numbers of staff in the cleansing department that are needed. People have to have a massive fight to get a bin anywhere. We do not have anything like the resources necessary in local authorities to provide for the recycling, reuse and so on that we would need to have a meaningful circular economy.

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