Pádraig Mac Lochlainn (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I second the motion. In the past few weeks there has been public discourse after it emerged that many of the waste collection companies would double or treble the cost of waste disposal services. That did not come from nowhere; it did not come from left field. Let us remember that the legislation was deferred for an entire year. I would have thought, therefore, that the then Minister, Deputy Alan Kelly, over the heads of his senior departmental officials, would have brought in representatives of the waste management companies and local authorities and said the following to them:

This is what we intend to do and these are the objectives. We are doing really well in the case of dry recyclables. We are doing well in recycling plastic, paper and cardboard. We are doing a really good job because years ago the necessary infrastructure was put in place, but we are not doing well in the case of organic waste. We are also not doing well in recycling food waste, garden cuttings and clippings and need to do a lot better. We need you to roll out a three bin system. In Dublin, for a certain type of recycling service, the bins are green, but in Donegal they are blue. The brown bins take organic waste; the black bins take whatever is left and their contents must go to landfill.

It has been a legal requirement for over one year, where one lives in a town with a population of over 1,500, to ensure one's waste is separated. One must ensure organic waste is put in a brown bin, that dry recyclables are put in a blue or a green bin and that the rest of the waste is put in a black bin. Tens of thousands of families have yet to see a brown bin. They cannot, therefore, comply with the law, even if they wanted to and most of them want to do so. In a week's time people who live in a town with a population of over 500 must comply with the legislation. Can one imagine the number of towns that will now join the list? Can one imagine the tens of thousands of households who are supposed to comply with the legislation but cannot do so?

Today the bin provider in my part of County Donegal received an inquiry. A member of staff said that not only could they not give a date when brown bins would be delivered but that they would not do so as the company did not have the capacity to do so. The infrastructure is not in place in the county to make such provision. In one week the new legislation will come into force, but not a single brown bin has been delivered in County Donegal. The council was then contacted and a member of its staff said: "We have people on leave, out sick, etc. and cannot oversee it." That shows that there is no oversight and regulation of waste companies in the State.

Many good citizens may be listening to this debate, or perhaps they have better things to do, but those listening may think to themselves: "I recycle plastic, paper and cardboard, so I am a good citizen." Despite this, significant amounts of recyclables are incinerated in waste energy plants instead of being recycled. There are big questions marks in that regard.

What is the level of oversight? If a local authority does not have oversight of waste management companies and they have no inclination to implement the law the Government is insisting on bringing forward, the entire initiative is a farce. That is why Sinn Féin has tabled the motion to have the statutory instrument annulled. We want the secondary legislation to give effect to the changes to be annulled and withdrawn and to go back to the drawing board. In so doing one would avoid the last minute panic in bringing in representatives of the waste management companies to ask them to freeze the charges for one year. I do not want the Minister to paper over the cracks.The Minister must negotiate properly, which will mean speaking to departmental officials, managers of county councils and directors of services in local authorities. He must also tell the waste companies what they must do. If this is done properly, it would have the potential to increase recycling rates, which currently stand at between 40% and 50%. We can do better than that by minimising the amount of waste going to landfill and being incinerated. Those who came before us set this process in motion. They pursued laudable objectives but were failed by a lethargic Department and lethargic Ministers.

One would have expected the Fianna Fáil Party to embrace the motion on the basis that it is common sense and to have called on the Government to go back to the drawing board. I read the Fianna Fáil amendment on the Order Paper and agree with most of it. However, the party has decided that the new politics in the Houses will be that its motions will be passed with the collusion of the Government and the Government's agenda will be passed with the collusion of Fianna Fáil. However, God forbid that a Bill or motion is tabled by any other part of the Opposition because Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael will vote it down. What we have is new politics for Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael and the same old politics for Sinn Féin and everybody else.