Vol. 544 No. 3
367 Mr. Deasy asked the Minister for the Environment and Local Government his plans to subsidise recycling operations where the volume of the operation makes it a very borderline case between profit and loss; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [28791/01]
It is not proposed to provide a subsidy from public funds for the ongoing costs of recycling operations.
In accordance with the principle of producer responsibility, it is right that waste generators should pay directly the full costs of waste collection, treatment and disposal. In support of this approach, producer responsibility initiatives already operate in Ireland in the areas of packaging waste and farm plastics waste – Repak in the case of packaging waste and Irish Farm Films Producers Group in the case of farm plastics. In these cases, producers are required to take steps to recover waste or, alternatively, to contribute to and participate in compliance schemes set up to recover the waste in question. These schemes in turn provide a subsidy for the collection and recovery of material for recycling, which provides economic support for the recycling sector.
It is intended that similar producer responsibility initiatives will be extended to other waste streams in the future, for example, end-of-life vehicles, tyres, waste electronic and electrical equipment etc. These initiatives, together with the increasing cost of landfilling waste, will further stimulate and improve the economics of recycling in Ireland.
Capital funding for suitable waste management projects, including recycling initiatives, will also be made available under a new scheme of capital grants for waste recovery infrastructure, which I intend to announce shortly. The environment fund, which will be funded by the proposed levies on plastic shopping bags and landfilling, will provide another source of potential future support for recycling.
