Noel Grealish (Galway West, Independent)
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189. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment the status of an allowance for persons with incontinence towards pay-by-weight bin charges; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [40434/18]

Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent)
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My Department is continuing the work of developing a mechanism to provide a €75 support for persons with lifelong or long-term medical incontinence to help meet the average annual cost of disposing of medical incontinence products. This process has unfortunately taken longer than envisaged, due to data protection issues that have arisen since the introduction of GDPR. However, I can assure the Deputy that I am committed to introducing the annual support as soon as practically possible in conjunction with relevant agencies and stakeholders.

In line with the commitments set out in A Resource Opportunity - Waste Management Policy in Ireland, published in 2012, and in the interest of encouraging further waste prevention and greater recycling, flat-rate fees for kerbside household waste collection are being phased out over the period autumn 2017 to autumn 2018, as customers contracts come up for renewal. The necessary regulatory steps have been put in place to give effect to this measure.

It is worth noting that this measure is not ‘new’ for about half of kerbside household waste customers, who are already on an incentivised usage pricing plan, i.e., a plan which contains a per lift or a weight related fee.

As announced in mid-2017, mandatory per kilogramme 'pay by weight' charging is not being introduced. Allowing for a range of charging options, which encourage householders to reduce and separate their waste, provides flexibility to waste collectors to develop various service-price offerings that suit different household circumstances.

The Price Monitoring Group has considered twelve months of data to date. While fluctuations in prices and service offerings have been observed, the overall trend is relative price stability.