Brendan Ryan (Labour)

It has been overwhelmed gradually by rubbish which is now being diligently collected by the city council which then employs people to search through it to find some address so that it can prosecute somebody. Given that local authorities have managed not to notice hundreds of thousands of tonnes of material being dumped illegally, the diligence is, perhaps, admirable. However, the current system of domestic waste disposal is running into increasing public resistance.

Around the peripheries of Cork city there is a gradually developing necklace of black bags dumped indiscriminately. I gather the same is true of many of the rural areas on the periphery of Dublin. What is not being dumped is being burned. I invite people to read the Government's website on the Race Against Waste to see the damage caused by backyard burning. Approximately 90% of the dioxins in the atmosphere are a consequence of backyard burning. To be honest, the current strategy is not working. It is not working because it does not have political assent and is being imposed by dictatorial city managers who are not accountable to anybody. If we want to deal with waste, we must re-engage the public. The current situation in which our cities are being turned into dumps——