Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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174. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if his Department or a body under its aegis has monitored if waste collectors have weighed waste since July 2015 and provided this information to their customers; and if he will provide this data. [18060/16]

Barry Cowen (Offaly, Fianna Fail)
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179. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the percentage of households he estimates do not avail of an authorised waste collection service; if he ensures that local authorities investigate whether these households manage their waste in an environmentally acceptable manner in accordance with legislation and waste management plans; and if he can provide statistics on the level of monitoring by local authorities of these households' waste disposal practices. [18105/16]

Simon Coveney (Cork South Central, Fine Gael)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 174 and 179 together.

Waste Enforcement Regional Lead Authorities (WERLAs) have been established in each of the three existing waste regions, with responsibility for coordinating waste enforcement actions and ensuring consistent enforcement of waste legislation while still leaving local authority personnel as first responders on the ground to specific breaches of waste legislation. This will facilitate a transformation from process-driven enforcement, structured around separate implementation of individual regulations, to one that focuses greatest effort on the waste problems and issues that matter most and to take swift, proportionate and effective action.

A working group on the introduction of Pay-By-Weight charging, consisting of members from my Department, the WERLA’s and the National Waste Collection Permit Office (NWCPO), has to date devised and completed a programme of data collection and inspections to help ensure that household waste collectors are, inter alia,weighing waste and making those weights available to customers. The first phase began in March 2015 with an information & awareness visits, followed by vehicle inspections (June 2015), customer account inspections (February 2016) and back office Inspections (April 2016). There are currently further inspections on-going in coordination with the NWCPO review of waste collection permits. The work of the WERLAs is being supported by continued funding provided by my Department for the local authority waste enforcement network. Some €8.2 million is being provided in 2016 for the retention by local authorities of 155 specialised waste enforcement officers, critical to tackling issues such as illegal dumping in local communities and in providing an enhanced response on the ground to infractions of the waste code.

The Environmental Protection Agency National Waste Report from 2012 estimates that approximately 72% of households availed of a kerbside hou sehold waste collection service, with other households managing their waste through bring banks, civic amenity sites and waste brought directly to landfill. However, this estimate contains a number of caveats as set out in the Report.

In terms of investigating whether households manage their waste in an environmentally acceptable manner, the Regional Waste Management Plans published in 2015 set out policy actions to:

- identify areas of low collection coverage and survey householders who are currently not availing of a household waste collection service to determine the cause (end 2016);

- design and implement a programme to regulate, enforce and communicate in areas with low collection coverage (ongoing); and

- engage with authorised waste collectors to design solutions to serve communities or areas of low collection coverage and implement the solutions (end 2017).

In addition, certain local authorities have introduced bye-laws which require householders to sign up to a household waste collection service.