Alan Dillon (Mayo, Fine Gael)

I thank the Deputy for her interest in this area. It needs to be a bottom-up, top-down led approach. We are looking to publish the draft of the circular economy strategy. A key area of focus will be targeted actions. Local authorities can play a huge part within the local government system. However, we need a stronger uptake around innovation in these areas. We will have a public consultation. We will welcome feedback from businesses, SMEs and many of the social enterprise organisations on what they would like to see this scheme comprising of. We are focusing on textiles, construction and packaging as being key principles in this scheme in terms of areas of priority. We have a journey to go on this. I look forward to building more initiatives within the circular economy in many areas across business and local authorities.

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