Ciarán Cuffe (Dún Laoghaire, Green Party)
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Question 640: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government the revenue collected to date in 2006 from charges on consumers under the WEEE directive; and his plans for spending same. [5442/06]

Dick Roche (Wicklow, Fianna Fail)
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The WEEE directive allows producers to show the cost of recovering and recycling "historic" waste, that is, waste arising from electric and electronic products put on the market before 13 August 2005. These costs are referred to as environmental management costs or EMCs. They are not imposed by or remitted to the Government, but are paid by producers to the two collective compliance schemes operating in Ireland, WEEE Ireland and the European Recycling Platform. These schemes are operating a producer responsibility initiative. Consequently, information on the revenue collected to date in 2006 is not available in my Department.

The purpose of the EMCs is to enable the schemes to pay for the environmentally sound management of all household WEEE taken back by retailers or deposited by members of the public at local authority civic amenity sites. The EMCs applied show the costs of recycling based on data submitted by producers to the WEEE Register Society Limited, the industry-based national WEEE registration body, which has an independent committee of management.

The WEEE register assessed and approved the EMCs and my Department has no function in the matter. The EMCs are under review and it will be a matter for the WEEE register to validate any revisions. Data relating to the operation of the scheme will be available following completion of this review.