Alan Farrell (Dublin Fingal, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State for his response. Like every new scheme, there are bound to be teething problems and there were a few along the way in the last few weeks. Like my colleague, I broadly welcome the success rate that has been illustrated. I note with appreciation the amount of time that the Minister of State gave to the Oireachtas joint committee recently where he went through this in great detail.

Reliability is an issue with some of the machines in place. I wish to discuss the possibility of transferable credit, rather than being stuck with credit for a particular retailer. People often choose to return to a particular location for convenience's sake rather than in a retailer that one might use on a regular basis because of that reliability issue.

There are deposit-return-style schemes in other jurisdictions where they have the capacity literally to pour a bag of bottles and cans into a machine and the machine does the work and will most likely kick out ones that are not appropriate. Can we investigate moving to such machines? It would be of extreme convenience for people and make the experience a little less onerous at the weekends in particular. I am sure the Minister of State is aware of the queues in his own constituency as I am in mine.

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