Róisín Garvey (Green Party) | Oireachtas source

I welcome this Bill. It is like something the Green Party would have written 30 years ago. We are a small party in government. It is great to see other parties, including Sinn Féin, finally bringing forward improved policies, or indeed any policies, on climate or the circular economy. It is also great that this Government, for the first time ever, has a Minister of State with responsibility for the circular economy who has done significant work on a lot of these issues. The Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, has been funding projects all around Ireland looking at exactly these issues, including repairing items instead of dumping them. A lot of work has been done on this already. It is easy to draw up a list and say we should do all of this right now but I am afraid that while this is a very good list, implementation and action will take time. There is no point in saying that we want all of these things right now, nothing will ever be thrown away again and we are going to fine everybody. We all know that will not happen overnight. Even if we enacted the Bill tomorrow, there would be war over it because we have no systems in place for this. The Green Party is the only one that has ever talked about this happening. It is great that Sinn Féin is bringing this to the table. I did not see it in the party's policy documents when I was thinking of joining only four short years ago but I am really glad to see it there now. It is good to be imitated in politics, as they say. First they laugh at one and then they imitate one so I am really glad that Sinn Féin is copping on to the really important work that needs to be done here.

I would like to mention a few things that have been done already by the Minister of State, Deputy Smyth. An enormous amount of work is being done on fixing clothes and using second-hand clothes. Myself and my three Seanad colleagues often make videos about all the clothes we are wearing coming from second-hand shops. I bought this for €4 from Oxfam in Wexford two weeks ago. I am really glad to see this is coming from somebody other than the Green Party because it takes everybody. If we are serious about climate change, climate action and having a proper circular economy, we need all of the parties on board.