Mark Dearey (Green Party)

I welcome the Minister of State. I noted and agreed with Senator Phelan's comment that it was important in these difficult times that competitiveness remained a priority. While the explanatory memorandum to the Bill acknowledges there is no cost to the Exchequer, it is important that the burden on business is kept to a minimum.

It is important to recognise that, when talking about chemicals, we are talking about materials that are extremely useful to us but which are also very powerful in the natural environment. If mixed with other substances in unrestricted circumstances, there can be a range of pollution effects and damage to wildlife and water tables.

Pollution effects have been legislated for through various directives, including the water framework directive. However, many of the legislative instruments are still mismatched against the REACH legislation. While the latter outlines the 1,000 or so chemicals that are available in Europe and the very hazardous chemicals available to industry and in domestic settings, there has been no proper assessment of the time it would take to phase them out. Chemical substitution is proceeding at too slow a pace. The announcement in May by the EU Commissioner for the Environment, with the EU Commissioner for Industry and Entrepreneurship, Mr. Antonio Tajani, agrees to the potential phasing out of over 100 chemicals. However, the timeframes are not tight enough and the intent is not expressed seriously enough. The substitution of many chemicals is possible and this is where the drive needs to occur at European level. In the meantime we need to legislate for the chemicals on the market which number well over 1,000. The Bill largely updates the Chemicals Act 2008. The Minister of State has outlined the various updates and did so in a perfectly clear way. The Bill comprises an important legislative tool to control the use, storage, labelling, identification and classification of chemicals.

There is a wider picture to be addressed. It concerns how we deal with the most hazardous chemicals in the longer term. Some such chemicals are still released into the environment, sometimes through agricultural use and sometimes through the control of aquatic lice, for example. Many such chemicals have unestablished and unproven long-term consequences. Given the commitment to the precautionary principle throughout European Union legislation, we need to treat some of the more serious and hazardous chemicals as substances that ought to be substituted or phased out completely. I understand from Greenpeace that, if we proceed along the current trajectory, it could take up to 100 years to phase out the use of hazardous chemicals, in spite of the possibility of substitution if there were sufficient will and research in this area.

I welcome the Bill and regard it as helpful in the management of the substances in question, most of which are critical to production processes in modern Irish industry and for domestic and small business uses. I do not wish to increase the burden on businesses but believe it is important to put down a marker that points to the fact that managing the most hazardous chemicals is only a first step and that phasing them out is ultimately desirable. We need to pursue the aim of complete substitution of the most toxic and noxious chemicals over time.