Bríd Smith (Dublin South Central, People Before Profit Alliance) | Oireachtas source

We would like to acknowledge that the Minister has made significant changes and we welcome that. It is a stronger and wider definition than the first draft. However, we still have concerns and would like to see the actual responsibility placed on manufacturers and producers. The current wording seems to suggest that the same practices, that is, the unsustainable use of materials and so on, can continue, with an emphasis solely on efficiency and usage. We think it needs to be wider and to signal the end of the possibility that anyone can continue to make profits from the old way of doing business, which has been, to use the economic jargon, an externality of costs to society. We welcome the changes but we still think the language remains vague and open to get-out clauses.

I ask the Minister to explain again why he has removed the words "to hold food". What is the logic in removing this? Is this a sop to the lobbying that we have had from the industry? It is absolutely essential to specifically identify what single-use plastic products are overwhelmingly used for here. If the Minister's aim is to widen the scope of the definition, why not add to the uses as opposed to removing the specific use of "to hold food"? I ask him to explain his thinking on that.

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