Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I am delighted to be here to make this statement about household waste charges. I think everyone in this House can agree that we must act now to prevent a return to an over-dependence on landfill. As Minister, it would be inexcusable for me to do nothing and to allow a situation to develop whereby household bins would go uncollected on our streets because there is nowhere to bring waste. This is the motivation behind the proposals I have made and why I have listened carefully to those who want to contribute constructively to the debate. I include in that regard the constructive suggestions I received from Senator Ardagh regarding the legislation on litter. For this reason and to acknowledge the concerns of some households, I will establish a pricing watchdog monitoring unit that will provide monthly reports on pricing developments. I will also ask the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, to report on the operation of the household waste collection market. This will inform the future development of national waste management policy before year end, which will in turn provide an evidence base to establish a regulator in order to prevent price gouging. This unit will comprise representatives from the CCPC, my Department, a consumer representative from an organisation such as St. Vincent de Paul and an external economic expert with market knowledge. I have been saying clearly for some time that I am not introducing a mandatory pay-per-kilo model. Such a model would be too restrictive and would not be the most appropriate for certain households. Indeed, I have expressed my own concerns in respect of those with lifelong or long-term medical incontinence.

More than half of households currently subject to a kerb-side waste collection regime are already on an incentivised pricing option and are happy to continue with this model. In fact, and this is a point that has not been sufficiently emphasised, there will be no change in their situation as a result of the measures I am introducing, with the exception of those with medical incontinence who will now see an annual reduction of €75 on their bin charges.

Over the past 12 months, my Department and I have engaged with a wide variety of different stakeholders. As a result, the Government made a decision last week on the future of the household waste collection market. As I intimated at the outset, there is not sufficient capacity to deal with household waste unless we make some changes. Either we change the amount of waste being presented by householders or we build additional facilities to deal with the waste. The choice we face is stark. We have moved from having landfill facilities in each local authority area to a situation whereby there are only four landfills accepting household municipal waste at present. None of us wishes to go back to the position that obtained previously and difficult decisions are necessary as a result.

Flat-rate fees are not a good option for encouraging behaviour changes because it does not matter how often the household presents bins or how much waste is in the bin presented. This is why flat-rate fees are being phased out over the next 15 months.The second change facilitated under last week's announcement is the roll-out of the organic brown bin to households in communities with a population greater than 500. That will encourage households to minimise the amount of waste they generate and segregate the remaining waste. That is to ensure the minimum waste possible is presented in the residual black bin. In March of this year we ran a month-long campaign encouraging people to use brown bins for food waste and asking them to look at what food they were throwing out and to shop more wisely on foot of that. On average, families are throwing out €700 worth of food every single year. A small change in how people purchase food can have a big impact on the amount of food waste that is generated and the cost of the food waste. We also want to encourage people not to put food waste into the black bin, as many are doing at the moment, but to put it into the brown bin.

The final change is to provide a Government support of €75 per year to assist persons with medical incontinence. That is based on the average cost of disposal of 650 kg of incontinence products and was developed in consultation with industry and patient stakeholder groups.

The measures are part of a range of initiatives I am continuing to work on to reduce Ireland's waste, including the roll-out of food-organic brown bins to all communities, as I outlined; an anti-dumping initiative to support the clean-up of dumping blackspots and to target those who engage in that illegal practice through appropriate enforcement actions and the use of overt and covert surveillance equipment, drone technology and other enforcement tools, with 85 projects approved to date this year and a total available allocation of €1.3 million; the provision of €9 million this year to support waste enforcement by local authorities, the expansion of the Environmental Protection Agency's stop food waste campaign, as well as the launch of a food waste charter in March 2017 and an action group on wasted food in the retail sector; the student-led green schools programme, which promotes long-term, whole-school action for the environment with involvement from the wider community which has resulted in the diversion of 4,700 tonnes of waste from landfill in a single academic year; the Repak recycle and change for the better schools programme, launched in the previous school term, which educates future generations about the benefits of best recycling practices, changing behaviours towards recycling and ultimately reducing the amount of waste going to landfill and the level of recycling bin contamination; the introduction of a new scheme to manage end-of-life vehicles to stop the dumping of vehicles; the imminent launch of a new scheme to manage waste tyres to tackle the widespread dumping of tyres in rural areas; and the ongoing awareness and education campaign by the regional waste management planning offices to assist householders in reducing their waste and recycling more effectively.

Emergency measures were needed twice last year to deal with the capacity crisis which was taking place. If emergency measures had not been taken, it would not have been possible to have bins collected. This is an ongoing issue. We need to deal with the problem or we will be in a situation by 2020 where we will have no facilities available to deal with two months of waste collection. Surely no one is suggesting that for the months of July and August we should not collect bins. Rhetoric and grandstanding will not change that. Decisions are required. We are facing challenging EU targets and we need to incentivise households to do the right thing and reduce the amount of residual waste we generate. Failure to meet an existing or future target leaves the State open to infringement proceedings and potentially punitive fines.

The changes the Government is making to the proposed mandatory per kilo charging system means there is the potential for more competition in the market. Rather than only being able to offer a per kilo rate, companies can now offer a range of incentivised pricing options. Examples of these include the per kilo charge, a lift fee and per kilo charge, weight band charging and, weight allowance plus per kilo surcharge for excess weights.

What I have announced means no change for half of the households in the market using a kerbside collector, and for the other half the operators can offer a variety of plans as long as they incentivise waste reduction and segregation. If a company is not offering what the market wants, it is open to a competitor to offer a different plan which does meet market demand. That is what drives down prices, namely, open competition and pricing options.

The basic message to households is to think about the waste they produce. When price plans are offered to the less than half of the market not currently on an incentivised plan from autumn this year to autumn next year, it will make some demands on households. To control waste costs it will be necessary for households to minimise the waste they generate and to segregate the remaining waste properly.

We have to make changes and it is only right that the more waste one produces, the more one should pay. Unless people want to see the re-emergence of landfills in every local authority area, we need collectively to make the transition from taking little notice of what goes into the black bin to being conscious of what we are dumping. What we are doing is most certainly not about imposing financial hardship on families. Using our bins properly will not only make a difference to our waste costs, it will also make an enormous difference to our environment and to our future.