Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party) | Oireachtas source

The Deputy is right. In government, we can pass legislation, as could this House. This House, in the end, is the final arbiter. We have to have the numbers in the House. That is our democratic system.

We have a waste action plan containing some 200 actions, and I see that as a central focus of what I and my colleague, the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, want to deliver. As the Deputy says, we need to dramatically enhance our recycling levels, reduce the amount of waste and create a more circular economy. That is what those 200 actions do. It emphasises a polluter pays and producer responsibility in a variety of different measures. The most totemic will be the introduction of the deposit refund scheme in the next two or three months. There are a range of other measures, particularly with the business community, placing the responsibility on it to reduce waste.

Our efforts and key focus are on those 200 actions. There is nothing stopping local authorities coming back into the sector. I have yet to meet a local authority that wants to do so. I have spoken to every single council in the country about a variety of environmental and other issues and they are not coming back to me saying they want to see a transfer back towards a municipal-led model.

Part of the problem is we have disempowered local authorities and we still have councils where councillors vote consistently to lower property taxes. We could actually start thinking about reversing that, strengthening local authorities and building up local government. Household and other charges over the years have become so politically unpalatable that they have undermined local government and the ability for us to take the sort of a action the Deputy refers to regarding changing our waste management system.

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