David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Office of the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this issue and the Minister of State, Deputy Noonan, for being here to take it. I am sure I am speaking to the converted as far as he is concerned when I state we live in a beautiful country. It is fabulous. There are lovely hedgerows, fields, mountains, lakes, rivers and coastlines throughout the country, but the amount of litter and fly-tipping is increasing all the time. It is particularly evident on rural roads. Now that the vegetation has died back, all the cans, bottles, paper, plastic and other litter that has been dumped there can be seen. It is a blight on the landscape. It is a national shame.

I am calling for a national campaign to combat this problem. It should not be a once-off spring clean but rather a year-round campaign. I would like the Minister of State himself to head and personify it. It needs a champion. Maybe he will take that on, become known as the Minister against litter and clean up the country once and for all.

I pay tribute to those involved in Tidy Towns, who do amazing work, as well as Irish Business Against Litter, which was formed by Tom Cavanagh many years ago and does amazing work. I pay tribute to the Clean Coasts programme and, in my area in particular, Clean Coasts Ballynamona, which is led by Proinsias Ó Tuama, a teacher at St. Colman's Community College. It is an award-winning group that picks up litter along the coastline.

I am very concerned about remote areas such as rural roads and wild places that are being despoiled and ruined by people throwing away bags of litter. The litter is then attacked by crows and vermin and scattered. We need to find, name and shame those responsible, but we also need to have pride in our area and our country. We need to call on nationalism here and stop this scourge once and for all. Everything that can be done must be done. We must be unrelenting. People who come to Ireland and see the extent of this problem cannot believe it is so bad in some areas. I was going home on a Sunday recently and noticed that a person had just dumped two black bags of rubbish. The crows were beginning to open the bags and tear the rubbish apart. That is happening ever more often. Far more needs to be done.

I acknowledge that money is being allocated to local authorities and spent but each local authority should have a champion in respect of this issue. That person's one and only job should be to combat litter and to provide education, information and awareness-raising programmes to make people ashamed of litter and bring their litter home with them rather than dumping it out a car window. Walking along a country road, you can tell where the chip bag was emptied because you can see where all the litter has been thrown in particular areas. There are bottles, cans and plastic, which lasts almost forever. It impacts on wildlife - plants and animals and the visual beauty that should be there.

We need to get serious about this. We need somebody to champion it and be unrelenting on it. It should not just be about having a spring clean and then forgetting about it for the rest of the year. We need to do everything we can. I refer to recycling programmes. There was a talk earlier about coffee cups and reducing their use and so on. We are not doing it quickly enough, however. This issue should be highlighted on television screens, in newspapers, schools and cinemas and at community groups. There could be signs for car bumpers and so on to raise awareness. The Minister should have a committee of creative people working with him to prevent littering. In addition, there is a need for more incentives to help people to clean up their areas.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I thank the Deputy for his impassioned plea on this issue. It is a matter that exercises us all. In terms of champions, it is our collective responsibility here to lead. Tomorrow, I will be notifying the public of the ending of the hedgerow cutting season and of burning from 1 March. There are fires ablaze throughout the country at the moment. The Deputy rightly mentioned the impact on nature and water, including water quality. The nature of what is being dumped these days is shocking, including toxic materials. We have a real problem on our hands and it is impacting on our image abroad but, more important, on our collective well-being and sense of collective responsibility.

In accordance with the provisions of the Waste Management Act 1996, each local authority is responsible for the supervision and enforcement of the relevant provisions of that Act and of the Litter Pollution Act and the recovery and disposal of waste within its functional area. It is necessary to advise the House that under section 60(3) of the Waste Management Act 1996, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Ryan, is precluded from exercising any power or control in respect of the performance by a local authority, in particular circumstances, of a statutory function vested in it. Under the legislation, individual local authorities are responsible for dealing with cases involving the illegal disposal of waste in their functional areas, and it is matter for them to take the appropriate enforcement and clean-up actions.

Although the primary responsibility for management and enforcement responses to illegal waste activity lies with local authorities, the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications continues to provide extensive policy, financial and legislative support. For example, it provided €750,000 under the anti-litter and anti-graffiti awareness grant scheme for 2022, with a similar amount expected to be made available in 2023. Under this scheme, local authorities are responsible for selecting suitable projects and locations for funding and grant allocations. Funding is also provided annually in support of a number of important anti-litter initiatives such as the national spring clean, Picker Pals, the PURE Project and Irish Business against Litter. The Deputy mentioned Clean Coasts as well. I gave out awards to that body this year. It is involved in fantastic communities throughout the country. The recently enacted Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act advances several legislative provisions that will further enhance efforts in this area, including providing for the GDPR-compliant use of a range of technologies such as CCTV for litter enforcement purposes and an increase in the level of on-the-spot fines for littering.

In addition, the Department provides significant support to the local authority sector in its efforts to tackle illegal dumping. Almost €15 million, including €2.8 million in 2022, has been provided to the sector under the anti-dumping initiative since it was first introduced in 2017 to encourage a collaborative approach between local authorities, community groups and other State agencies to tackle the problem. The Department also continues to invest heavily in the local authority waste enforcement network through the local authority waste enforcement measures grant scheme, with the intention of maintaining a visible presence of waste enforcement personnel on the ground in the State. A total of €7.7 million was provided to local authorities under the scheme in 2022, while a further €1 million was provided to support the ongoing enhancement of the three waste enforcement regional lead authorities.

David Stanton (Cork East, Fine Gael)
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I thank the Minister of State for his response and the work he, the people in his Department and the local authorities are doing. We are lacking passion on this issue, however. He stated that under the Waste Management Act 1996, the Minister, Deputy Ryan, cannot interfere with local authorities and is precluded from exercising any power or control in respect of their performance. What if a local authority does not perform? What happens then? The Minister cannot do anything in that circumstance. We need to revisit and reconsider that Act.

The Minister of State outlined that €750,000 was provided under the anti-litter and anti-graffiti awareness grant scheme for 2022. We need to do more in that regard to raise awareness and provide education, including in schools, on this issue. As I stated, we need to name and shame people who are discovered littering.

We should make it a point of shame and on the other side of it, it should a point of pride for an area that is clean. As I said earlier, my real concern today is the rural country roads. On almost any road you travel on now at this time of the year when, as the Minister of State said, the hedges are cut back or should have been cut back to some extent anyway, you see it in all its glory. Plastic, bottles, cans, nappies, papers and black bags are dumped everywhere. The campaign the Minister of State has described is evidently not working. We need to do more. I call on the Minister of State, his Department and the local authorities to start taking this very seriously. This issue should be tackled on a daily basis. It is a national blight and it is polluting our rivers, seas, streams and land. It is unsightly, toxic and dangerous and it needs to be stopped. I do not think we are taking it seriously enough. A national awareness campaign through television, cinema, newspapers and social media should be invoked here at the very least. It should be unrelenting, because we are losing. I am sure colleagues here will agree with me that we find it on almost every road we travel now. I know that Tidy Towns and Irish Business Against Litter, IBAL, are doing great work in and around the towns but if you go further out into the country that is where you see it, in all its awful glory. I urge the Minister of State to get stuck into this.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Deputy Gould also agrees with the Deputy and strongly supports him.

Malcolm Noonan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Green Party)
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I want to raise a couple of points in summary. I agree with everything the Deputy has said. In relation to education in schools, the schools are at the forefront of this consistently, through the green flags initiative both in primary and secondary schools. Children are educating their parents. Late last year I met the Children and Young People's Citizens' Assembly on Biodiversity Loss. They are appalled by this and want action on it as well. It is critically important that we work collaboratively. We need more prosecutions through the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022, which will deal with issues around compliance and GDPR in the use of a range of technologies, including CCTV and other mobile recording devices, to determine environmental pollution. I think this is going to be important. In the past, it was very difficult to secure prosecutions. Once these regulations are approved, local authorities will be enabled to put in place both litter and waste enforcement measures involving GDPR-compliant use of technologies such as CCTV. We need a carrot-and-stick approach. That is really important.

Local authorities are highly active right across the country. The local government audit service ensures that there is a benchmarking how they perform their duties in this area. I agree with the Deputy on his point about campaigns. We need to use all media available to us, be it social media, television, radio, newspapers and other publications, to keep the public information and awareness side of it going. To be brutally honest, the people who carry out these activities, whether it is fly-tipping or throwing rubbish out of windows of cars, have no responsibility and have no pride in our State or our country. It is grossly irresponsible. Apart from all of the issues that the Deputy has mentioned in terms of the impact on our tourism industry, the impact on water, nature and all of that is hugely significant. We need to consistently double down on compliance and enforcement and awareness, as the Deputy has quite rightly pointed out as well.

Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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Before adjourning, I note the points raised by other speakers on the manner in which the Topical Issue matters are being delegated. I realise that there is great difficulty in making time for everything but this is one of the things we have to make time for. We thank the Minister of State for making himself available but it should be noted that the responsible Ministers are expected to be in the House if they can. Only in special circumstances should they be absent. The Ceann Comhairle is aware of this and the various Departments and Ministers also will be made aware of it tomorrow morning.