Mary Lou McDonald (Dublin Central, Sinn Fein)
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70. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the legislation in place prohibiting a local authority from negotiating contracts whereby waste collection companies would pay local authorities for the recyclable waste they collected. [33804/13]

Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)
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I published A Resource Opportunity - Waste Management Policy in Ireland in July 2012. The publication of the policy confirmed the retention of side by side competition in the household waste collection market and also brought much needed policy certainty to the waste sector, particularly in terms of facilitating planning and investment decisions. The policy further sets out a range of proposals significantly to revise the existing regulatory regime to ensure, inter alia, that waste collected is managed in accordance with the waste hierarchy, that mandated service levels are delivered and that Customer Charters are put in place by all waste collection providers. The work of developing new regulatory structures to give effect to these proposals is underway and my Department is engaging with a range of key stakeholders in relation to the detailed design of the new system. It is my intention that the revised regulatory regime will deliver both enhanced environmental performance and a quality service for consumers. Contractual agreements relating to issues such as the transfer of household waste collection services by a local authority to a private sector waste collector, or remuneration for recyclable waste collected, are matters for the relevant local authority and waste collector concerned.