Patrick Costello (Dublin South Central, Green Party)
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139. To ask the Minister for Communications, Climate Action and Environment if he will move to ban hard styrofoam p6 plastic; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [25733/23]

Eamon Ryan (Dublin Bay South, Green Party)
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P6 plastic refers to polystyrene or styrofoam, which is widely used in packaging and insulation. Waste polystyrene is accepted at some local authority civic amenity sites for disposal. These are listed on MyWaste.ie.

Certain applications of polystyrene have already been banned. For instance, the EU Single Use Plastics Directive transposed into Irish law in July 2021, banned a range of single-use items from being placed on the Irish market and this included expanded polystyrene cups and food containers.

Polystyrene packaging is subject to Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) provisions which ensures that producers of all such packaging are liable for the costs associated with the collection, transport and treatment of the packaging they place on the market in addition to the costs of providing adequate information to waste holders and data gathering agencies.

Ireland’s national packaging compliance scheme has introduced an eco-modulation model for plastic packaging to drive environmental considerations and members who place recyclable packaging material on the market incur fees lower than those for non-recyclable materials.

Separately, my officials are actively involved in negotiations on the proposed EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation. The draft Regulation does not ban any specific substance such as polystyrene, but rather proposes to place strict environmental criteria on materials to be used in packaging. These criteria include:

• Mandatory use of reusable or refillable packaging, for example takeaway drinks and meals or e-commerce deliveries;
• Banning certain forms of packaging for example single-use packaging for food and beverages when consumed inside restaurants, single-use packaging for fruit and vegetables, miniature toiletries in hotels;
• Mandatory rates of recycled content in packaging;
• Requirements that all packaging is recyclable at scale.