Gerry Horkan (Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Leas-Chathaoirleach very much. The Minister of State is very welcome. This is a little bit like Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown on tour here with him, Senator Ward and myself. We all soldiered together on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council. It is not unique but at the moment every single Member in the House, including the Minister of State, has been a former local authority member.We have all had direct experience of working as councillors on the ground and seeing this issue play out. In 2009, I was lucky enough to be nominated as the chairperson of what at the time was called the water and waste strategic policy committee. That was a time when councils had responsibility in totality for both water and waste. We dealt with this matter a lot and we were much involved with the setting up of the Protecting Uplands and Rural Environments, PURE, project in the uplands. Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council was involved with that. The amount of waste in the rural areas was huge.

People are speaking about their own areas. Senator Wall covers a large rural territory, as do other Senators, but as Senator Fitzpatrick and, I am sure, Senator Ward would agree, this is also an urban matter. It covers parks, hedgerows, at and behind bottle banks. It also covers industrial areas and it is not just about somebody who is not sure how to get rid of a bag of something. It can be done on an industrial scale and in a very respectable park, for example, one might pull back a piece of foliage and see 26 bags of something. One wonders at the effort to get them under that hedge. It might have been easier to go to a bring centre or leave them at a refuse centre. The effort to leave them in the park, probably in the dead of night, would have been significant.

Senator Cummins indicated this is not a silver bullet and we know that. It sends out a message, however, that people might get caught and it is a deterrent. The fact the process is both fixed and mobile means it can be anywhere. Drones are great because there are dumps out there and we do not even know about them. They are behind banks of clay, up mountains or in fairly secluded areas. There was industrial-scale dumping in the Dublin Mountains a number of years ago. For weeks on end, trucks full of stuff was being dumped up there. It cost a fortune to clear it out.

This is measured legislation and, to his credit, Senator Malcolm Byrne has checked with the Data Protection Commissioner. This is not a free for all and people will not be looked at going down the street on a sunny Sunday afternoon. Dumping is a scourge and there is not a local authority member in the country who has not been contacted about it, I am sure. There is not a local authority that has not had environment officers dealing with it. The €90 million or €100 million figure that is being talked about does not even take into account all the man hours of all the Tidy Towns groups and clean-up groups that go out on Saturdays and Sundays. I have done it with groups in places like Mount Merrion. These may be places we might not think of as being that dirty. The groups go out road by road, hedgerow by hedgerow and park by park, coming back with 50, 60 or 80 bags of rubbish on a Saturday. They are not filled with vegetation but litter such as cans, bottles and, in some cases, road signs or supermarket trolleys. They see all kinds of things.

This is a very measured Bill. It is nice that there is almost no opposition to the legislation in the House. The latter does not happen that often, so I hope the Minister of State's response will be as positive as everybody else's. It is a good measure and as 99% of people are very good, it will not affect them at all. There may be 1% or 0.1% of people who do this kind of activity and maybe they will think twice and go to their bring centre. As Senator Casey mentioned, much of this stuff can be disposed of for free. Why do people go to the mountains with a washing machine that can be brought to a civic recycling facility at no cost? Why would people do the same with televisions? Perhaps people do not know the service is free. Equally, if people are getting waste taken away, they should ensure that the person disposing of it has a permit and is going to a place where they are getting rid of it in a measured and appropriate way.

My local authority has indicated there are people in the area who only operate there because they keep getting waste from people. If people stopped giving those people waste, they would move somewhere else. I urge people to ensure that if they are having some sort of clear-out, they should use a registered and approved contractor so we know the waste will go where it is supposed to. Otherwise, it will be a problem. This is not just people in the middle of the night dumping a small bag and this happens on an industrial level as well.

I welcome the legislation. I hope it will be passed unanimously in order that it might be speedily processed through both Houses for enactment. It will not solve the problem but it will certainly help alleviate it. I congratulate Senator Byrne on bringing it forward.