Lynn Boylan (Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

I seek the leave of the House to amend the Order Paper such that No. 20 will be taken before No. 1. Senator Gavan will second the proposal when his turn to speak comes. Tá áthas orm go bhfuil deis agam cúpla focal a rá faoin mBille tábhachtach seo. Last week, Amazon officially opened its first warehouse in Ireland.It likes to call them fulfilment centres. I know that many will welcome the jobs that it will create locally but, for me, it is a reminder of why we urgently need legislation to ban the deliberate dumping of new non-food products.

In 2018, an investigation in Germany found that Amazon was destroying thousands of new and unused items in its warehouses and, despite the public outcry at the time and Amazon claiming it would do its best to resell and-or donate unsold items, the practice continued. A subsequent undercover investigation in France and Britain revealed that hundreds of thousands of products are going straight to the dump. A leaked spreadsheet from the British fulfilment centre showed products, including laptops, smart TVs, hairdryers, headphones, drones and books, all marked for destruction. When goods go to landfill without ever being used, they do not just waste the product and all of the energy and raw materials that went into making them, but we are also facilitating the greedy overconsumption and unsustainable business model of large corporations.

It is disappointing that while the Government was introducing the circular economy legislation, it had a chance to clamp down on this morally bankrupt carry-on but, unfortunately, it chose not to and rejected the amendments we brought forward. Instead, all we heard was the championing of the levy on plastic coffee cups. That is why I have decided I need to bring forward the legislation that would introduce the ban on the deliberate destruction or dumping of new non-food items that would include those electronic products but also textiles, school equipment, leisure products and furniture. It is too long now that the negative environmental costs have been borne by society. It is time businesses were forced to bear the full costs of their business practices. I hope the Government will adopt this common-sense legislation so it can move swiftly through the Stages and become law.

A final point concerns Commencement matters. There were issues around the responses given to some Members last week. Today, I would like to express my disappointment that my Commencement matter was not taken by the Minister, Deputy Humphreys, or even by a Minister from within that Department. I think it is disrespectful to the House that we do not have somebody who is at least aware of the policy area when taking those questions.