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

I acknowledge the changes the Minister is making. In committee we did quite a bit of work on the circular economy and there is no doubt that a lot of the gains of the circular economy will be achieved by rethinking the design of markets, products and services. It is very important that the Minister has acknowledged that. I might have gone a bit further to acknowledge the way we need to look at things differently. I will give a brief example in the motoring area. There is no doubt that if we moved gradually from selling vehicles as products, to be idle 95% of the time, towards seeing them more as services, there would be huge reductions in our use of materials and in our need for parking spaces. It would really transform, in a circular way, the environmental impact of our travel. I know that is a long way down the track but it is concepts like these that the circular economy needs to trigger.

As the Minister rolls this out, I do not believe that the EPA, as a fairly specialist agency, has the bandwidth to develop the programmes across a range of sectors that will realise the full potential of the circular economy. It is a great agency. It is very good at data collection and research but we need much wider political reach if we are drive the sort of change that is necessary. The Minister needs to reflect on whether the agency is sufficient to develop the programmes necessary. It needs a wider political remit. In my view, it should be integrated into climate action planning, which has a much broader approach in the way it develops actions to be executed.

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