Alice-Mary Higgins (Independent) | Oireachtas source

I will do my best. I will be coming back on Committee Stage. I welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, to the House. The legislation is part of a wider set of proposals in Ireland and at EU level to address the climate and biodiversity crisis. This Bill is focused on the economy and how it fits within the planetary boundaries and our fair share of them in terms not just of emissions but of resources, and effective and appropriate resource management.

As a member of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on the Environment and Climate Action, we engaged very extensively in a period of pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill. I am pleased to see that some of the recommendations are reflected in the legislation before us. However, unfortunately, a number are not. This is a moment to try to be a bit more ambitious and to get it right. This comes in a context where a significant amount of legislation relating to the circular economy is coming through at EU level and where we have due diligence legislation that is looking at supply chains internationally. This is the context, and a fundamental point is that a piece of legislation on the circular economy should not solely focus on consumption but should also focus much more strongly on production and a radical transformation of the production end of things. I feel that is a part of the legislation that could be strengthened still.

I will briefly highlight a couple of the areas that I will come back to on Committee Stage. One aspect not reflected adequately in the Bill is recommendation 62, which focused on extraction and the global dimension. I mentioned the fact that environmental and human rights considerations should be part of the global economy action plan, as this is in tune with the thinking on due diligence that is happening at EU level. The sustainable development goals, SDG, have a number of very specific provisions in terms of responsible consumption and production. This was a chance to integrate some of the SDG targets more strongly. I mentioned the human rights pieces, which I will leave aside for now, but I note my intention to strengthen in particular some of the areas around extraction of precious minerals and re-use and recapture of minerals. One thing we know is that, for example, more gold can be mined from mining tech waste in some cases than from direct mining. The fund is welcome, but it is not enough.

Something the committee recommended is that public procurement policy is one of the key tools and that specific measures on green public procurement should be part of a circular economy strategy. The Minister of State will be aware of my passion on this issue. I notice that there are levies and other measures, which are harder, that apply on the consumption end but the circular economy strategy, which has possibly a more important role to play, relies on voluntary measures in engagement with the sectors. I am concerned that on the production side we are going for voluntary measures and codes of practice. We are past that in terms of the crisis we are in, whereas we are going with quite hard tools on the consumption end. I feel the powers of levies should be extended.

Recommendations 58 and 59 have not been addressed either. They are measures relating to the right to repair. This legislation should contain measures in line with the right to repair and to protect against built-in obsolescence. Simply capturing that on the shop floor does not do. We need to capture that.

Something we also looked at, for example, was levies on virgin plastic in production versus direct levies. Because other speakers have points, I will finish even though I have a lot of points to make. I hope I will have the chance to engage with them on Committee Stage.