Ossian Smyth (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

Indeed, at the invitation of Deputy Niamh Smyth I went up and had a look at Shabra plastics in Monaghan, one of many visits I have made to Monaghan. I could see it is importing plastic from all around the world and meanwhile Irish plastic is being exported all around the world in contravention of the proximity principle. The question is how do we address this. We are not waiting for European agreement on a common virgin plastic tax. There are countries that brought one in. My Department is examining what form that could take and it is part of our circular economy strategy at the moment. I have been in contact with the Department of Finance, which pays out the unrecycled plastic tax as part of its EU membership following Brexit, whereby that became part of our EU membership costs. There is an incentive in the country to reduce the quantity of unrecycled plastic that exists and to do everything we can to make sure it is reprocessed. Repak does have an objective of processing plastic and recycling it domestically. I will look over the agreement we have with it over the rates they pay for local recycling.

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