John Curran (Dublin Mid West, Fianna Fail)
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60. To ask the Minister for Communications, Energy and Natural Resources the progress he is making with the waste industry to ensure when proposed pay-by-weight charges for refuse collection are introduced later in 2017 they will not result in price rises for households, which occurred in July 2016; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13693/17]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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The charges applied by waste management companies are matters for those companies and their customers, subject to compliance with all applicable environmental and other relevant legislation, including contract and consumer legislation. Any concerns relating to contract and consumer legislation should be directed to the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.

My Department is currently undertaking a review of pricing structures for household waste collection. Incentivised pricing for domestic waste aims to encourage people to prevent, reduce and segregate their waste, in order to reduce our impact on the environment and our reliance on landfill waste disposal. Encouraging people to reduce and recycle waste will be an important initiative in terms of helping to avoid a repeat of the landfill capacity emergencies which occurred in 2016 as well as meeting our targets and obligations under current and future EU legislation. The review is considering more than one form of incentivised pricing structure so as to allow flexibility for waste collectors to develop different offers to households and enable householders to engage with and get the most from their waste management service, but which will still encourage the prevention and segregation of waste.

A public information campaign developed by 3 Regional Waste Management Planning Offices (RWMPOs) has already begun to encourage households to (i) prevent food waste and (ii) manage their food waste more effectively.  The RWMPOs will roll out further elements of a national education and awareness campaign as the year progresses which will focus on encouraging people to manage their waste correctly, including preventing and reducing waste as much as possible and recycling effectively.