Fiona O'Loughlin (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Labour Party and Senator Wall for bringing this important issue before the Oireachtas. Many of us have struggled with the issue of illegal dumping in our areas and the frustration of seeing repeat offenders not being prosecuted for destroying our lovely local environments.

The Curragh plains is an area I have often spoken about in this House as the problem of illegal dumping there has been a major scourge for many years. I acknowledge, however, that the same activities are happening all over my county and all over the country. We recently had an instance of illegal dumping in the Kildoon and Nurney area and we regularly have dumping in the Lullymore area. Kildare County Council reports 40 to 50 incidents of illegal dumping every week and it spends more than €3 million per annum in dealing with same. That figure means the local authorities across the country spend about €90 million per year on illegal dumping. In December and January alone, more than 2,000 illegal dumping incidents were reported to Kildare County Council.

It is incredible that people have such a lack of civic-mindedness that they perpetuate this awful behaviour of dumping domestic, personal and other rubbish. There are two types of perpetrators. First, there are people engaged in fly-tipping who will indiscriminately dump bags of rubbish anywhere they see an opportunity to do so and feel that they get away with it. Second, there are the illegal waste operator making money from illegal dumping. There is a big case of this in Killina in north-west Kildare. It is shocking. I accept that there has to be a legal process but it seems to take forever. The offenders do not seem to be penalised in an appropriate or proper way but I accept that this is my view.

As a member of the Kildare joint policing committee, I on a subcommittee that tried to roll out State funding for CCTV but we kept coming up against particular barriers. Some areas such as Laragh, County Wicklow seem to have had success. There were problems there, which Senator Wall is addressing in this legislation but which we could not get over. We need to put legislation in place to permit the use of CCTV technology to secure convictions.There are terrific initiatives from our spring clean groups, Tidy Towns volunteers, green kilometre scheme or grants, as well as all the work our residents do. It is absolutely shocking then when we see what those who are just so un-civic minded are doing.

There are some flaws within the legislation, as I am sure Senator Wall is aware, but it is important to note that the Government and the Minister of State are working on this. We are all aware that there is a balance to be struck between our right to privacy and the need to protect our environment, but on balance, a slight loss of privacy is a price worth paying.