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Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 21 Jun 2006

Vol. 622 No. 1

Private Members’ Business.

Waste Management: Motion (Resumed).

The following motion was moved by Deputy Sargent on Tuesday, 20 June 2006:
"That Dáil Éireann,
—recognising the continued record levels of waste generated per head, as highlighted by the recent Forfás report and the low levels of recycling in Ireland;
—condemning the Government's failure to bring forward regulations under the Waste Management Act 1996 to give effect to producer responsibility obligations to promote the placing on the market reusable, recyclable and biodegradable products;
—acknowledging the civic mindedness of people, who are recycling;
—condemning the practice of local authorities which charge for community level civic recycling facilities;
—condemning the Government's failure to divert waste away from landfill as legally required under EU directives and the Government's plans to seek a derogation from the landfill directive requiring a reduction of biodegradable waste going to landfill by 2009;
—recognising that an independent expert has stated that incineration costs are significantly higher than that estimated by the Government;
—acknowledging that many local authorities have excluded incinerators from their waste management plans;
—recognising specifically that Dublin City Council has excluded incineration from its development plan; and
—recognising that the planning inspector's report on the hazardous waste facility in Ringaskiddy, which gave 14 reasons this development should not proceed, was overruled by An Bord Pleanála on the basis that incineration was "Government policy";
calls on the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government to ensure:
—that the Canadian Guelph waste management model of separate collection of wet (organic) and dry (inorganic) wastes from all waste outlets including households, be instituted by a given date;
—the provision of proper "civic amenity" infrastructure for both wet and dry waste at disposal depots in all local authorities, open to the public at no charge, and provide that collection services for all domestic recyclables are free of charge;
—the introduction of waste production regulations under section 29(4) and 29(5) of the Waste Management Act 1996, setting down producer responsibility obligations and targets for the composition, design, use and placing on the market of recyclable, reusable and biodegradable packaging and setting down specified limits on the use of virgin material in primary production of packaging;
—the establishment of a waste deposit regulations under section 29(4)(f) of the Waste Management Act 1996, to require producers, distributors or retailers to operate deposit refund schemes;
—the establishment of a waste reuse research and development programme and enterprise supports under section 28(2) of the Waste Management Act 1996, for innovative projects and business start-ups, for the reuse of waste packaging, and in particular for projects for the curing of contaminated food waste containers;
—that legislation is introduced to return powers to local authorities so that the making of a waste management plan is a reserved function by repealing sections 4 and 5 of the Waste Management (Amendment) Act 2001; and
—that the Minister uses his powers under section 24(c) of the Waste Management Act 1996 to require local authorities in Dublin County to vary the replacement waste management plan for the Dublin region made by them on 11 November 2005, by the deletion of paragraph 18.8 to exclude the siting of an incinerator on the Poolbeg peninsula in south County Dublin.”
Debate resumed on amendment No. 1:
To delete all words after "Dáil Éireann" and substitute the following:
—noting the very significant investment which has been made by the Government in developing modern integrated waste management infrastructure and services;
—noting also the remarkable progress reflected in the municipal waste recycling rate of 34% in 2004 (compared to the national target of 35% which was to be achieved by 2013) and the packaging waste recycling rate of 56% in 2004 (compared to the EU target of 50% to be achieved by 2005);
—welcoming in particular the significant funding made available by the Government to co-fund the dramatic expansion in recycling infrastructure which has facilitated the achievement of recycling targets;
—acknowledging the ambitious target of the national strategy on biodegradable waste to achieve the diversion of 80% of biodegradable waste from landfill by 2016;
—recognising the essential contribution which the diversion of residual waste from landfill to energy recovery will make to achieving national and EU waste management objectives;
—recognising also the very important contribution which producer responsibility initiatives in areas such as packaging and electrical equipment are making to the achievement of policy goals;
—reaffirms national policy on the integrated approach to waste management which places greatest emphasis on the prevention, reuse and recycling of waste while recognising the indispensable part which incineration with energy recovery will make to achieving the maximum diversion of waste from landfill; and
—reaffirms that any decision on the proposal for an incinerator at Poolbeg will be the subject of independent determination processes by An Bord Pleanála and the Environmental Protection Agency through the normal planning and licensing processes.
—(Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government).

I propose to share time with Deputies Fiona O'Malley and Kitt. I listened with interest to the debate last night. It is topical because waste management has become a major global issue in recent years. My role is not to criticise the Green Party. In fact, although it is not popular to do so, I commend it for the work it did in this area. Most mainstream parties now address the idea of saving the environment.

The Government's waste management policies are working. We are changing from a throwaway society and recycling rates are increasing rapidly. It is interesting to read the waste management benchmarking study recently published by Forfás. It makes for interesting reading when one considers the advances made in recent years. When this Government took office in 1997 the recycling rate was 9%. This increased to 34% by 2004 so we are well on the way to meeting the national target of 35% in 2013. We are eight years ahead of schedule, a considerable step forward.

Modern, environmentally safe methods are being introduced for the final disposal of non-recyclable materials. Concerted enforcement seeks to wipe out illegal waste activity. Much progress has been made over the past 18 months. Illegal dumping, where certain sections of society approached householders and illegally dumped their waste, was a concern. The key to the Government's policy is recognition that waste is, literally, a waste of resources that costs us twice. As well as the financial and environmental costs of disposing of it, we lose the value of the materials.

Ireland is becoming a nation that recycles. The role of schools and parents must be recognised. Teenagers are far more conscious of the environment than are middle-aged and older people. Ireland is especially successful on packaging waste, the recovery rate of which is 57%. This exceeds the EU target of 50% by 2005. Commercial premises are obliged to segregate at source and present certain specified waste material for recovery, leading to what is effectively a ban on these materials for landfill.

Carlow County Council has provided resources for a landfill extension but we cannot continue this indefinitely. We must bite the bullet and consider thermal treatment. I have been in favour of it for a long time. As we continue to reduce, reuse and recycle the amount of residual product will be small. Nevertheless, landfills will be necessary.

The majority of householders have separate bin collections for recyclables. Local authorities provide brown bins for kerbside collection of household organic waste. A move to pay per use domestic charges rewards those who recycle more. The vast majority of householders recycle and I am told recycling centres are the new centre for social gossip on Saturday afternoons. They are becoming far busier at weekends, leading to traffic congestion.

The Government published its national strategy on biodegradable waste in April 2006, a document grounded in the integrated waste management approach. It sets out measures by which Ireland will achieve 80% diversion of biodegradable waste, 1.8 million tonnes, from landfill by 2016. For the first time in a national waste management strategy document, targets have been set for waste prevention and minimisation. Recycling through organic treatment is a major component of the plan. We are also developing safe environmentally friendly infrastructure.

Not all waste can be recycled. The most environmentally progressive of our EU partners rely on thermal treatment despite high recycling rates. Of the benchmarked countries in the Forfás report, only New Zealand has no thermal treatment plants. Modern incinerators are subject to the most stringent controls and, as a member of Carlow County Council I visited a number of these plants in operation in France, Germany and Denmark. A number of Irish facilities are at the planning and licensing process. Landfill will be used for residual waste but remains critical until the rest of the infrastructure is in place. We have changed from having many low quality landfills to fewer landfills operating to the highest environmental standards. In the past landfills did not have to be licensed and many farmers used quarries. One could not imagine the type of material contained in these dumps. Greencore has closed down two of its factories over the past two years. From speaking to former workers, I am aware that workers used landfill for hazardous and chemical waste. This will take much money and time to rectify. I commend the Minister for his work in this area.

I came in yesterday evening to listen to the Green Party debate this important strategic issue. I was sadly disappointed. I wasted my time. What I heard was one member of the Green Party after another kick their constituency colleagues around the place. Deputy Gormley started with his colleague, the Minister——

Was Deputy Fiona O'Malley disappointed with the Minister's output?

No. I am speaking about the Green Party.

Where are they?

Would they mind not interrupting me until I make my points?

The Minister kept interrupting.

We were treated to a kicking of local constituency colleagues. I am sorry that the people are not in the Gallery today because I would have expected——

They are.

——such a short time from a general election, that this is the opportunity for the Green Party to put its cards on the table, to announce its policies on these important issues and to tell its constituents who were in the Gallery exactly how it will deal with this critical waste problem. The Green Party recognises it as a critical waste problem but not one of them took the opportunity to discuss the Canadian Guelph theory and process. They did not even bother to address their own motion because they, and particularly Deputy Gormley, were so keen——

Deputy O'Malley was not listening.

Deputy O'Malley, please address your remarks through the Chair.

I am. Deputy Gormley, in particular, was playing to the Gallery——

Here is my speech.

——which was full of his constituents. I am sorry that those constituents are not present to hear what he would do were he in Government——

I am sorry Deputy McDowell is not here.

——but this is the problem with the policies of the Green Party, which does not finish its sentences. They tell us the problem, which we all recognise, and what we all need to do, but they fail to deal with the responsibility of the response. They have never yet been in Government and they will be a long time waiting for office because they do not live in the real world dealing honestly and responsibly with the issue.

It is an important issue and I am grateful to the Green Party for highlighting and giving us the opportunity to discuss this Forfás report. One point I have taken from that report is the progress Ireland has made. The Minister stated in his speech yesterday that we are on the right road. The road is not finished, but clearly Ireland has made enormous improvements. Deputy Nolan spoke about this. Before the Government took office in 1997 recycling rates were at an atrocious level of 9%. They are now at 33%.

It was the people, not the Government, who solved that.

We all agreed targets for 2016 of 35% which we have almost reached.

Where is the recycling happening?

It would be nice of them to applaud success when it is achieved.

Where are they recycling the glass and paper?

I agree with anybody who states that is not enough but let us try to get as much done as we can. Part of the reason that recycling efforts have been taken up so well in Ireland, to which Deputy Nolan also alluded, and which also has much to do with efforts such as programmes in schools, is undoubtedly the bring centres. My area of Glasthule has a new facility which means it is so much easier for people to recycle. We all are easily able to recycle because it is as convenient as taking rubbish with you for disposal and recycling when going to the shops or wherever.

There is another glaring point in this Forfás report. It clearly sets out the infrastructural deficit in terms of waste management. This is another area where I take issue with the Green Party. On the energy side, it continuously tells us how good other countries like Denmark are in terms of generation of wind power, renewable energy and the like, but it fails to be honest about it and state such countries also use nuclear power. Equally, Flanders is sited as an example and I agree it is one to which we all should aspire.

Does Deputy Fiona O'Malley want that as well? She is her Daddy's daughter all right.

Dessie wanted it. Now Deputy Fiona O'Malley wants it as well.

In Flanders, which is the ideal to which we all aspire, the recycling rate has reached an incredible 70%. Would we not all like that in Ireland? Flanders' waste recovery to energy rate is 26% and its disposal rate is a mere 4%.

It is not.

They are able to do this because they have in place the waste management infrastructure, which includes incineration — the Green Party must get its head out of the clouds and have its policy rooted in the real world. We need to be honest about this. It is part of how Ireland will deal, not only with its waste problem but equally with helping energy generation. It is something we should be embracing.

Because the Green Party has never had the responsibility of office, it has never had to nail its colours to the mast. I am sorry the people from Ringsend are not here because they deserve an honest reply in response and a policy from their public representatives. That is why, to finish the sentence for the Green Party, they might tell the people what they will do and how they will do it.

Unfortunately, the closest I have seen up the Green Party come to a policy is in terms of zero waste.

Towards zero.

I have heard them state that it is possible.

We never said that.

It is not possible. A policy rooted in such a scenario is not dealing with the real world. The pages that all the Deputies produced last night to help with their speeches is waste generated. I agree it can be recycled but the recycling system wastes energy too. This notion of zero waste is an utter fallacy. I am sure Fine Gael and the Labour Party are quite anxious about this. We must get the Green Party grounded in real policies.

I have tremendous regard for my colleague on the Joint Committee on Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Eamon Ryan. We work well together on energy, on which, by and large, the Green Party has a sensible policy, but it needs to get into the real world with some of its other policies. It is not behaving as if it is a real party with real policies in that sense.

The Green Party has always gone into the politics of the negative. I will not list and quote statistics about what the Government has done here——

Deputy O'Malley does not know them.

——because they have been recited previously. We have a good track record.

Damn statistics.

The Government did nothing.

Nobody will deny there are problems but if everybody in this House were honest, they would agree that some type of energy waste recovery facility is required and will be delivered in this country.

Burn, baby, burn.

We should all back it because the alternative, as we all know, is noxious, poisonous landfill. I was watching on television quite recently the opening of a new landfill site in Galway.

Where does the toxic ash go?

Deputy O'Malley without interruption please.

On the same day a planning application had gone in to extend the Indaver facility in Meath. The television reporter stated he knew which place he would like to live next to. People, particularly from the Green Party, are most dishonest about emissions.

Where is Deputy McDowell?

According to well known statistics, what happens in back gardens is far more noxious.

Spurious.

Unfortunately, people burn stuff in back gardens. Certainly, living near a thermal treatment facility is much safer than living beside a landfill.

Until it malfunctions.

It is not the route we should go. Landfill does not work and we need to minimise it.

I agree with all Deputy Fiona O'Malley said. No party here has a monopoly in this area. My contribution is based on facts because the Government has produced good results. I welcome the opportunity to demonstrate how environmentally aware are the Government's policies.

More than anything else, this debate affords the public the opportunity to see clearly that environmental issues are not the preserve of an individual party. Over the past nine years, and in less time in some cases, Fianna Fáil, with its partner in Government, has implemented a raft of successful environment initiatives that are measurable in their effects. Over its period in office, the Government has made key decisions concerning the environment and renewable energy which will serve to protect our environment for future generations, and that is what we are about.

These decisions have been made at a time of unprecedented growth in our economy, which most Members have acknowledged in the debate. Less than a decade ago, we recycled less than 10% of our municipal waste but, by 2004, this had climbed to 34%, approaching the EU average, at a time when the workforce increased dramatically. How does this square with the Opposition's contention that the Government has failed to divert waste from landfill?

We have almost reached our 2013 national recycling target of 35% while we have been particularly successful in recycling packaging waste. Between 1998 and 2004, the number of bring banks and recycling centres almost doubled. The Government has committed more than €90 million to recycling and recovery facilities since 2003 and the number of facilities has continually increased as a result. The majority of households have separate bin collections for recyclables and local authorities are increasingly providing brown bins for the kerbside collection of household organic waste. In my constituency, South Dublin County Council received a huge response from the public to the provision of home compost bins.

The Government's adoption of the polluter pays principle rewards those who recycle. Hundreds of thousands of people share my view that recycling and other environmental activities are positive acts of citizenship. In shaping our polices, we have been meeting the ever growing demands of citizens and consumers for the Government to enact creative policies and legislation that rewards modes of living that are sustainable environmentally. In 1997, only 70,000 homes had kerbside collection. By 2003, this figure had increased to more than 506,000 and the number is set to increase rapidly.

The Government is finalising proposals for a new scheme to deal with scrap cars and other vehicles so that they can be disposed of responsibly and in a sustainable way. Fianna Fáil and its Government partner took the decision to place a levy on plastic bags. Does the Green Party opposite recall a time when plastic lay strewn across the countryside along roadsides and in fields?

We proposed a levy in 1994.

Millions of plastic bags were land filled for years and the levy has reduced plastic bag use by more than 90%.

We thank the Government for the levy, which we proposed.

It is not recognised in the motion. The levy has produced its own income stream, which in itself has succeeded in funding a host of other environmental initiatives. The Government took radical action regarding the working environment of the individual, not reactively but proactively, by banning smoking in the workplace.

Fianna Fáil, with its partner in Government, has demonstrated itself to be the sensible and practical Irish clean environment party, implementing creative and imaginative policies which aim to care for the environment and which aim to bring about sustainable changes in attitudes. Crucially, we are doing this in a way that is consistent with our growth and development as a nation and as a developing economy. When faced with the choice, I am confident that citizens will choose those who will safeguard our future both economically and environmentally.

Almost 75% of the waste discarded at home or in the workplace is biodegradable. Traditionally, the great bulk of this waste has gone to landfill. In 1998 only 11% of biodegradable waste was recycled but, by 2004, 33% of biodegradable municipal waste was being recycled. This was achieved at a time the economy was expanding. Ireland must meet a target of 80% by 2016 and the Government, in its national strategy on biodegradable waste published by my colleague, shows the way to achieve this without sacrificing our living standards, quality of life or the employment prospects for future generations. It is gradually becoming clear that the Government's environment policies are based on the principle of integrated waste management, which prioritises waste prevention and minimisation followed by reuse and recycling, with landfill as the final resort. Having made substantial progress on the latter two, we must continue to strive to make progress on the prevention and minimisation of waste.

I agree with the Minister for Environment, Heritage and Local Government about the strong inconsistency of those who, on the one hand, praise the public for engaging in environmentally aware behaviour such as recycling, yet on the other, criticise the Government for its record in this regard. A glance at the facts highlights commitment, resolve and real results on the part of the Government. For example, construction and demolition waste recycling in 2004 reached 84%, just below the target set for 2013. Despite strong criticism from some quarters regarding the electrical waste recycling scheme, Ireland was one of only three countries to implement the EU directive fully and on time last August. In the period to the end of February, almost 15,000 tonnes of this waste was collected for recycling.

I agree with my colleague, Deputy Fiona O'Malley, regarding the Green Party's position on incineration. The party has left itself exposed as inconsistent and opportunistic in this debate. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government stated it is clear the Green Party environment Minister in Germany adopted a much more honest and responsible approach in pursuing a policy framework that had incineration with energy recovery as a core principle. Before he left office, he introduced severe restrictions on the use of landfill. How many more landfills does the Green Party want constructed throughout the State? The party has not given leadership on this issue and, while there has been a convergence of views on renewable energy, an open and honest debate is needed in this area.

The European Union is at the leading edge in this field. It should be commended on having among its ranks a number of the world's most environmentally advanced countries

They are big into nuclear power.

They can combine high rates of recycling with safe and effective use of thermal treatment. This is the way forward. It is not right that we should dump our waste on our EU neighbours or on future generations.

The Government will still have to use landfill. Where will the ash go?

If the Green Party is given an opportunity to implement its policies, it will force us to continue to use the least environmentally friendly way of dealing with waste.

I agree with the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government who said the way forward is to use state-of-the-art incinerators to produce electricity or district heating. This is much preferable to burying our waste.

The Government will still have to use landfill. Where will the ash go?

If we do not pursue an intelligent debate on those issues, on which we must face up to hard questions, we will have buried our heads in the sand. This important debate is welcome. Waste management will be a key issue and we owe to our children and future generations to debate it in an honest and open way.

Hear, hear.

The incineration issue is centre stage and we should, like our colleagues in the European Union, face up to it and address it properly.

Including Fianna Fáil.

I wish to share time with Deputy Gilmore. It is the stated policy of the elected members of Dublin City Council, as set out in the Dublin City Development Plan 2005-2011, to oppose the siting of an incinerator on the Poolbeg Peninsula, while it is the stated policy of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats to build an incinerator on the peninsula, despite what their representatives and candidates in the local area may claim. The Government parties solved this problem by removing all relevant powers from the elected representatives of the people on Dublin City Council and vesting them in civil servants instead. Ministerial diktat runs the waste policy of Dublin city.

The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government claimed last night in the House and on RTE radio earlier, that CHP will be undertaken in Poolbeg. He asserted there would not be incineration and certainly not a mass burn incinerator. What, a normal member of the community not fluent in the jargon of waste management might ask, does CHP mean? CHP stands for combined heat and power. CHP means a mass burn incinerator that extracts both electricity and heat from the incineration process. Does that sound familiar? Is that supposed to be okay? As Shakespeare, the Bard, might have said today: "That which we call an incinerator; by any other name would smell as foul". Officials of Dublin City Council still call this an incinerator. They are not under the cosh of the Progressive Democrats and the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, and his Fianna Fáil colleagues are using the language of public relations. Next, he will tell Members that it is not a tax hike, it is a revenue enhancement.

I take this opportunity to thank the Green Party for tabling this motion and for giving the many Opposition Members of this House who have been vocal on the matter a chance to voice their opinions. Several Government Members will also be keen to make statements. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Roche, expressed his personal preference many times that no incinerator be located in Wicklow. The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, who is not in the House and presumably will not enter the Chamber this evening, has given similar promises regarding the proposed Poolbeg incinerator, including, as Deputy Gormley noted yesterday, in his election literature.

Indeed, the Minister recently issued a leaflet entitled, Michael McDowell is opposed to Dublin City Council's mass burn incinerator at Poolbeg. Therefore, if he has the courage of his convictions, I look forward to seeing him cross the floor this evening to vote in accordance with the documentation with which he has flooded the constituency of Dublin South-East.

At the outset, I wish to declare an interest. I represent the constituency of Dublin South-East and I live less than 500 m from the proposed location of the incinerator. There are valid and logical reasons to oppose the siting of an incinerator at Poolbeg and yesterday's contributions covered many of them. I will draw attention to some specific aspects which I believe are important, as well as introducing some new information to the record.

The choice of Poolbeg is the first in a series of bizarre and illogical decisions made by the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government. Poolbeg is at the heart of one of the city's most valuable assets, namely, Dublin Bay. The bay is not simply an economic asset in terms of the passenger and freight shipping facilities it provides. It is also a major recreational facility for those living in the city. The proposed S2S, or Sutton to Sandycove promenade, will greatly improve this facility. This is the most populated bay on the island.

Hence, it is bizarre to introduce an enormous industrial plant dedicated to burning waste of all types in the middle of the most scenic part of the city. While the Poolbeg peninsula has long been left idle, the opportunity now presents itself to use it for the benefit of all citizens. The Progressive Democrats have pointed this out in wonderfully graphic literature. They have flooded the constituency with a Sydney, Australia-like image of what that part of the bay could look like. Tonight however, as Deputy Fiona O'Malley informed the House, they will vote for the destruction of that possibility by putting an incinerator at its heart.

It would be remiss of me not to mention my colleagues, Councillors Kevin Humphries and Dermot Lacey, who are four-square behind me and the Labour group on Dublin City Council in respect of this issue.

According to figures released by Dublin City Council officials, 600,000 tonnes of waste will be required to fuel the incinerator each year. This amounts to 1,644 tonnes per day. City officials already accept that at least 140 20-tonne trucks will be obliged to travel through the area each day, as well as an unidentified number, possibly as high as 240, according to the assistant city manager, of smaller bin lorries. More trucks will be required to transport the bottom ash, that is, the residue left over from incineration, back out of the incinerator plant, adding at least 30% to the volume of truck movements.

This is in addition to the already chronic traffic problem afflicting the area, with significant volumes of traffic passing along Strand Road, as well as trucks travelling to and from the port and local building sites. The officials claim that some of the trucks will use the port tunnel. Even if this is the case — they admit that at most, less than half will use the tunnel — the effect on the area will be enormous. There will be dust, dirt, smells and traffic jams.

While my colleague, Deputy Gilmore, is more than capable of expanding on this issue, I suggest that incineration in its present form is now an outdated technology. Many European countries have stopped building new incinerator plants to deal with waste and are concentrating on combined mechanical and biological treatments and large-scale recycling. Historically, recycling in this country has been neglected and recycling on any significant scale has only taken place in recent years. However, there is a serious problem with the Government's basic approach to recycling. For example, no present scheme makes it financially worthwhile for a commercial company to recycle extensively. Companies do not engage in waste reduction in a broad sense because of the associated opportunity cost.

The opportunity cost of not recycling or reducing must be increased greatly. If companies found it more economical to recycle than to simply feed waste into the system, one can be sure that every company in the state would so do. Why can rational market forces not be harnessed to achieve an outcome desired by all, instead of ignoring the market and extolling the motivation of companies while allowing them to dump their waste, which is in effect what is happening? The Labour Party believes it is time for the Government to properly incentivise recycling across the entire spectrum of society, not simply among domestic households.

Our existing landfill systems also leave much to be desired. The days of the dump are long gone. Other European countries intensively manage their landfills and we must do the same. I will leave the more detailed examination of incineration and the other available options to my colleague, Deputy Gilmore.

The particular project that has been mentioned in this motion, namely, the proposed incinerator at Poolbeg, is not quite as cut and dried as it may seem. There are anomalies in the claims made by officials in the tendering and procurement processes and in the manner in which the entire plan has been pushed through from the outset.

Mr. Joe McCarthy, a name which makes officials from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government quake in their boots as he was one of those who exposed the e-voting machines scandal, recently produced a report on the process, based on what little information he could extract from the Minister and his officials. It is recommended reading for anyone interested in how not to manage a large-scale infrastructural project.

I wish to address several specific aspects of the project that serve as exemplars of how badly managed it has been thus far. The Waste Management (Planning) Regulations 1997 require a waste management plan to include systems to monitor "before, during and after" any changes made by the plan. Chapter 11.3.2. of the waste management plan agreed by the elected members of Dublin City Council requires city officials to record such statistics. However, they will not make such information available to the public and it appears they do not have the information. Starting a project without knowing one's starting point is not simply foolish, it is negligent.

The technical model used to rationalise the decision to build an incinerator at Poolbeg was valid for the period from 1997 to 2011. Only five years remain until the end of this model's lifespan and I find it extremely unlikely that any incinerator will be built and functioning within that timeframe. Therefore, we will be building for a future which we have not even tried to envisage. Again, this is not simply foolish, it is also negligent.

The cost model assumptions involved in the economic rationale for the incinerator are equally outdated. For example, while the interest rates used in the model for the process of construction were calculated at 6.5%, the current European Central Bank rate is 3.75%. The original plan costed the plant at €146 million and the technical model uses the same cost. The siting report, used to determine the premium location, uses a cost of €127 million, while the Forfás review of 2001 refers to a cost of €160 million.

However, Mazars Consultants, which provides costings estimates for large-scale projects, estimates that an incinerator of smaller capacity than that proposed in Dublin would cost €200 million. Must I mention the Dublin Port tunnel to provide the House with a litany of miscalculations in respect of costs?

Hear, hear.

Which number is real? Are any of the figures which I have just quoted real? How can the city's officials use two different costings, while central Government has a third? This is not just foolish, it is negligent to the point of being criminally so.

Costs such as for the removal of the residue ash, baling, CO2 emissions under carbon trading per the Kyoto Protocol which is another cost, unsold heat from the plant, and the removal of toxic ash from the system were ignored by city officials in their calculations on this project. The cost of these four elements alone is approximately €45 million per year. They have been completely ignored in all calculations and data we were able to get our hands on. This is not just foolish, it is negligent.

City officials also recently admitted they have already spent €10 million on this proposal for an incinerator. Without a planning application even lodged, it seems like a significant output for a dodgy plan. Fees have flown out to consultants left, right and centre. I quote the words of my party leader, "delighted and touched". The consultants were delighted, we were touched heavily and it seems it could happen again. It appears the mathematics required to cost the plant properly are missing, but those for calculating the consultants' fees are quite in order. This is not just foolish, it is negligent.

I could continue, but I have used up my time. Whatever about the theological arguments for and against incineration, and the merits and demerits of the methods proposed to deal with what is clearly a waste problem, will the Government please get this right? We had electronic voting machines and the port tunnel. We do not need the incompetence of Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats to compound what is wrong environmental policy.

I support my colleague, Deputy Quinn, in his devastating critique of the proposal to locate an incinerator in the Poolbeg Peninsula. In recent years we were led to believe that the issue of this incinerator in Poolbeg was the subject of a titanic struggle at Cabinet and that the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform was blocking the publication of the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Bill until he managed to get the Poolbeg incinerator excised from it.

The Bill was published, I spent all day working on Committee Stage, and it provides for incinerators. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government states Poolbeg is not included. However, the only reason it will not be included is because the planning application will have been made before the Bill is enacted and commenced. In other words, the success of the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, in having the Poolbeg incinerator removed from the Bill to fast-track infrastructure projects, including incinerators, is only because it will be fast-tracked even faster than the fast-tracking Bill would have permitted.

This Government certainly changed many aspects of waste management. By the time of the next election it will have had ten years in power and it will have fundamentally changed the way in which waste is managed, but not necessarily for the better. It will have changed it from being a public service to a private business. When the Government came into office admittedly the way in which waste was managed was not acceptable from an environmental point of view, but it was a public service mainly operated by local authorities and universally delivered.

Two thirds of the waste collection services are now in private hands as is much of the waste infrastructure. The proposed incinerators will be privately developed as will many new landfills. Waste has become the new means of making money in Ireland's infrastructure. One of the most immediate requirements is for legislation to regulate the operation of the private waste industry from collection through to the end product.

The Government also changed the legislation governing waste management. It took waste management out of the democratic domain and made the entire legislative framework quite undemocratic. The making of waste management plans is now a managerial function in local authorities. The setting of waste charges in local authorities is now a managerial function and is no longer a function of the elected members. It has gone further than that. It set down in legislation what is almost a diktat, a direction which must be followed by local authority managers in drawing up waste management plans.

Over the past nine years, the Government established a framework and infrastructure for waste management for the next 20 to 25 years. Incineration is at the heart of that. One of the first acts of the present Government after its election in 1997 was to require that waste management plans be drawn up on a regional basis rather than on a county basis. The rationale was that each of those regions would have an incinerator. The regions were the catchment for the incinerator.

On leaving office, this Government will leave behind a waste management legacy which will be quite difficult to unravel and put right. It will require a change in legislation, regulation of the private waste management industry established under the present Government, and a move to a different way of dealing with waste rather than the way the present Government has made incineration the centre of the strategy from which everything else flows. The collection system is predicated on incineration.

It would have been far better if the Government had concentrated on investment in building up a recycling infrastructure which would have treated waste as a resource rather than a problem which must be disposed of. It will certainly leave behind a major mess which will be an enormous challenge to the next Government.

I propose to share time with Deputies Cowley, Finian McGrath and McHugh.

I welcome the opportunity to support this motion on recycling and waste management. One of my main difficulties with a debate on recycling and waste management strategy is that all other alternatives were not tried first and our official policy is incineration. We spend €60 million to €90 million building incinerators. This in turn will encourage us to produce waste to keep feeding the incinerators. They are built at high cost and will not be left lying idle. That is a major difficulty. It encourages bad practice.

They must be fed.

Yes. We will not build a structure for €60 million or €90 million and leave it sitting idle. This is the major difficulty we have. When people are applying for planning permission for such incinerators, they are afraid or almost ashamed to call them incinerators. They want to call them power-producing plants or plants that will link into the ESB grid. The people of Monaghan find themselves in a catch-22 situation in that an incinerator is being built although planning permission was sought for a power plant. There was no reference to an incinerator in the application to the county council. The case is to go before An Bord Pleanála next week and it will be interesting to see how it develops.

One reason incinerators are referred to as power plants is to take one's eye off the health hazards associated with incinerators. Whether we like it, incinerators produce dioxins, which are carcinogenic. This is a major difficulty and we will have to address it. Nobody has convinced me or produced evidence that incinerators do not produce dioxins and are not carcinogenic.

I am concerned about the proposed incinerator in north Monaghan, which is to be in an area with very poor road access. The amount of additional traffic that would be generated on the rural roads defies logic.

There is now a recycling ethos. It is not just a matter of picking up cans but of stimulating the environmental consciousness of society. We have started on this journey and we should continue to do so. We should encourage young and old alike to develop better policies.

I, too, support this motion. The Green Party has done us a great service by tabling it. There is a great need for leadership on this issue and I do not feel the Government has provided it.

Communities are well capable of doing what is required if they are given direction and support. We have seen that communities in rural areas in which water schemes were not available addressed the matter themselves. The necessary Government support has not been evident.

Incineration is taking the lazy man's option and not facing up to the possibilities of reducing waste, reusing and recycling. The coming generation will be much more able to deal with these issues than we have been. The future bodes well but we must ensure we preserve the environment for our children, who will make a better fist of things than we did.

There is a rush towards privatisation. The Government has been abdicating responsibility to do what is necessary. Local authorities are run by unelected people. In Mayo, for instance, all the councillors are in favour of retaining public responsibility for the disposal of waste, yet there is a move towards privatisation just because the council is supposedly losing money. One wonders about this given that the private sector can make a profit from waste disposal. There is therefore something wrong.

We cannot abdicate responsibility for the support of older people. The State has done so in respect of private nursing homes and the same is happening in regard to waste disposal. There is a move towards big business and we are told the future lies in helping people to make a bob.

The people of Ringaskiddy made a decision that an incinerator was not for them. The local authority made the same decision, as did the inspector of An Bord Pleanála, but it was overruled on foot of Government policy. If one put the matter to a referendum, one would find that people are much more in favour of recycling than incineration. They have proven they are capable of recycling and will do so if they get the chance.

I am thankful for the opportunity to speak on this excellent, well thought-out motion on waste management. The Taoiseach should apologise in this House to Deputy Joe Higgins for the disgraceful personal attack he made on him here today. I urge him to do so because he was totally out of order. It was an absolutely disgraceful personal attack.

The Deputy should refer his remarks on the Taoiseach——

It is very important that this issue is raised because it is not acceptable to any Deputy.

I commend the Green Party on putting forward sensible solutions to the crisis that exists. I challenge the Minister on his record in dealing with this matter. He needs to wake up and deal with it in a progressive, environmentally sound and healthy way. He conned the taxpayers regarding the bin tax issue and is now conning them with the so-called waste management strategy. The vast majority of people are way ahead of the Minister regarding recycling. He is guilty of lengthy delays in rolling out planned infrastructure and there are continual increases in waste generation due to the growing population and nature of the economy.

Let me state what is happening in Fairview Park following the construction of the Dublin Port tunnel. Yesterday at 10.25 a.m. I entered the tunnel site at Fairview following calls from local residents and saw at first hand the dumping of contaminated clay. I saw clay littered with metal, plastic, blood-soiled sheets and syringes. This is not the clean topsoil that was promised. I challenge the Minister on the waste crisis and the associated serious health and safety issues. What will we do about Fairview Park? What kind of clay and waste is the Minister sending down to Mountmellick? These are serious questions. The Minister needs to wake up regarding the tunnel waste.

As of today, there are 261 damaged homes in the Marino, Fairview, Drumcondra and Santry areas, although residents were told before the construction of Dublin Port tunnel that this would never happen. I have received 117 complaints from residents outside the 30 m zone. The disgraceful damage to people's homes is a shame and I urge immediate action and compensation for all the affected families on the north side of Dublin.

I deplore the Government's failure to introduce regulations under the Waste Management Act 1996 to give effect to the producer responsibility obligations to promote the placing on the market of reusable, recyclable and biodegradable products. I compliment the civic-mindedness of citizens who are already recycling. I challenge the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government on the hypocrisy of the Government and I challenge the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform over the fact that incineration costs are significantly higher than the costs estimated by the Government. Does the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform support the Government's policy or is the rich southside boy allowed, once again, to throw his toys out of the pram and get away with his hypocrisy on incineration? I challenge all members of the Cabinet in this regard.

I support the motion, which sets out a sensible plan and way forward while at the same time respecting and protecting the environment and, above all, the health of our citizens. I urge all Deputies to support it.

This necessary debate on waste is very welcome and I congratulate the Green Party on tabling the motion. To put it mildly, it was disappointing to hear the Minister's speech yesterday in which he made a vain attempt to undermine the motion rather than deal with the issues it raises. I do not necessarily agree with all the elements of the Green Party's motion but I respect its right to pursue its agenda in the House without having to put up with the arrogant approach of the Minister.

Hear, hear.

The Minister should realise that nobody, including him, has a monopoly on wisdom.

I acknowledge that much progress has been made in this country in respect of waste management. Local authorities, under the guidance of the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, have made much progress, starting at the basic level where they have focused on educational programmes for schools, including pilot programmes in this regard in national schools. Importance has been attached to the Green flag, now much coveted by so many schools.

Much has been achieved in educating the public on the best way to deal with its waste. In general, one would have to say the public response has been positive but we must recognise that some members of the public are not prepared to play their part. The latter engage in the dirty habit of dumping their waste at the location most convenient to them, which can be anywhere.

Last Tuesday morning, just outside Kinnegad, I witnessed what appeared to be a washing machine and a dryer dumped on the side of the N6, a national primary road. Some people must have filthy habits if they can do that. People are not prepared to take responsibility. They have the lazy, revolting view that they owe nothing and it is always somebody else's responsibility.

The motion before the House calls for the power to be returned to local authorities to ensure that the making of a waste management plan is a reserve function. If we are to allow local authorities reach their full potential and live up to their name of delivering local government, every decision of this nature should be devolved to local authorities.

Local authorities had the power to make regional waste management plans but that power was removed by the Minister at the time because he was of the view that local councillors were not prepared to make the plans. From a local perspective, however, local councillors were not making the best management plans because they disagreed fundamentally with the draft plans being put forward by the consultants. It must be said that all this happened at a time when the new approach to waste management was beginning and, because of that, it is timely that the return of the powers to local authorities be considered.

Waste management is one of the most important issues facing the country. Ordinary householders have wrongly faced the double taxation of paying more than their fair share of income tax through the PAYE system and then paying further levies for the disposal of their household waste. Not content with forcing these unfair charges on ordinary citizens, they are then told they should do the extra work of sorting their waste before disposing of it. The irony is that people have been very quick to embrace that role and do what they can to help protect the environment while this Government has dragged its heels in formulating, implementing and enforcing a progressive waste management policy.

A welcome feature in modern Ireland has been the introduction of recycling centres throughout the country, but the recent attempts to charge users of such facilities are scandalous. The people who sort their rubbish before transporting it to such centres should be rewarded, not penalised. If a system were introduced whereby frequent users of recycling centres are rewarded by receiving a discount on their domestic refuse charges through a card system similar to those used in supermarkets, we might see a major increase in the use of recycling centres.

The amount of waste generated by junk mail and newspaper supplements must be addressed as well, and not at the expense of the consumer. A tax should be put on those who wish to do a mail-drop. Similarly, newspaper companies who insert free books or DVDs, which invariably are wrapped in plastic and usually end up being dumped, should be taxed.

The Minister, Deputy Roche, ran scared when a tax on chewing gum was mooted. Such a tax should be introduced immediately as the state of pavements throughout the country due to discarded chewing gum is disgraceful.

The country has seen a dramatic increase in roadside dumping. One refuse bag quickly becomes a mini-dump as people go to any lengths to avoid paying disposal charges. There is also a rising trend of householders burning domestic rubbish in their fireplaces in another effort to avoid paying refuse charges. Local authorities must act quickly to eliminate such actions and introduce measures to continually encourage recycling and proper disposals.

As other speakers mentioned, the question of landfills must be urgently addressed. Too often, landfills open with various guarantees given by local authorities only to be followed by poor management and little control. In my county, Clare County Council opened a new landfill site in September 2002, but already the county council is facing possible legal proceedings by the Environmental Protection Agency if it does not improve the operation of the site. Notice has been served on Clare County Council for operating outside the terms of its waste management licence. The main concerns of the EPA include the lack of adequate surface water control at the site. As well as this, the landfill liner membrane is not adequate, resulting in leaking from the dump.

If a local farmer continued to be in breach of the EPA guidelines and compliance notice, he or she would be before the courts in double quick time, but the same rules do not appear to apply to Clare County Council. If anything, they should be more strictly enforced. County Clare attracts a large number of tourists annually but we can be sure that no one will ever be asked for directions to this dump as the odour emanating from the landfill can be smelled some distance away.

I reiterate Sinn Féin's support for the Green Party motion as expressed by my colleague, Deputy Morgan. The Government's handling of the massive waste problem in this country has been a travesty of waste management and of democracy. During my first term in this House, I was a serving local authority member and, during those years, I saw the efforts of councillors, including of my own party, to have a real input into regional waste management plans thwarted and a sham public consultation process undertaken. The agenda was set by central Government and implemented by county and city managers over the heads of elected representatives. That was confirmed when the Government amended the law to remove powers of elected representatives to make waste management plans. That was done to impose waste incinerators on every region in this State, a project that is advancing slowly but surely. No one should make any mistake about that.

We heard the Minister, Deputy Roche, on the radio stoutly defending his plans for incinerators. I recall the same Minister saying he would not favour an incinerator in his county of Wicklow. His Cabinet colleague, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, with an eye to retaining his seat, is verbally opposing the incinerator planned for Ringsend. These are the very people who accuse those of us in the House who oppose incinerators on principle of being NIMBYs.

It was the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Noel Dempsey, a former Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, who removed from locally elected representatives the power to adopt waste management plans because they refused to include incineration as a means of dealing with the waste issue. Instead, he gave those powers to unelected county managers who are forced to include incinerators in the regional waste plans because that is Government policy.

Local communities, like those in Duleek and my area of Carrickroe, in north Monaghan, are now faced with incinerators being built in their locality contrary to the wishes of communities. That is unacceptable. I pay tribute to those communities which are fighting tooth and nail, and with few resources, to ensure that the environment they grew up in is passed on to their children in as good, if not better, a condition than they inherited.

Local democracy has been incinerated by this Government. In our capital city, councillors voted to exclude the Ringsend waste incinerator from the development plan. The city council voted democratically against this incinerator, yet this week, my party colleague, Councillor Daithí Doolan, exposed the fact that the city management has spent €10.5 million of public money promoting this unwanted scheme. A total of €10.5 million has been paid out of public coffers to advance this project, including the procurement process and so-called public awareness. Of that, €104,000 has been spent by the city council on so-called public information sessions, newsletters, advertisements, posters and letters. As Councillor Doolan stated:

The millions wasted on this public relations racket should rightly have been invested in promoting reduction of waste and invested in our fledgling recycling industry. That would have made a real difference to the waste crisis facing this City.

I refute the allegations of the Minister and his colleagues in the Dáil and in the media that those who oppose incineration have no alternatives. For many years, the two main parties that make up the Technical Group — Sinn Féin and the Green Party — have had detailed practical policies on how the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle can be put into effect. During my first term in the Dáil, Sinn Féin produced a detailed regional plan for waste management in my region covering counties Cavan, Monaghan, Louth and Meath, including an address of the significant agricultural waste problem.

Communities who oppose incinerators are the same communities who have consistently demanded more and better recycling facilities. People are ready and willing to support more initiatives to reduce waste, but this Government has been found wanting. It has failed to require industry to reduce packaging waste which ordinary householders end up paying for in refuse charges. It has privatised local authority refuse collection. This has left people on low incomes without the waiver scheme they availed of when refuse collection services were managed by local authorities. Those schemes were brought in to aid those for whom waste charges were clearly a heavy burden. At the very least we need private operators who are under contract to local authorities to operate waiver schemes. What is really needed is the reversal of the privatisation of waste management services.

I thank the Green Party for the opportunity to comment on the increasingly successful approach to waste management that has been taken by this Government since it came into office. Notwithstanding some of the negative and not very well informed comments we have heard over two evenings——

The Minister of State should not talk about the Minister, Deputy Roche.

——I am certain that real progress is being achieved. This is being greatly facilitated by some €90 million which the Government has committed since 2002. That is done to co-fund recycling infrastructure.

It is giving in to big business.

The dramatic growth in recycling and segregated household collections is ample testimony to that.

More zero waste.

Last evening the Minister, Deputy Roche, outlined that in 1997 we were at9%, 166,000 tonnes and today we are at 34%, 920,000 tonnes, which clearly indicates there has been major progress. In regard to the heavier waste structure, including waste to energy, we are beginning to see progress at last in respect of public and private projects.

During the debate the need to move segregated collections of biodegradable waste was mentioned. We, on this side of the House, could not agree more. Brown bin collections are now in place in Waterford and Galway. A pilot scheme is running in Fingal. Funding we committed last autumn will assist the construction of two facilities, which will permit the rolling out of brown bin collections across the entire Dublin region and other local authorities are following suit.

There are those, however, who cling to the zero waste non-solution. It simply does not work. Those few areas outside of Europe where it has been tried have now tacitly admitted this fact. The Minister outlined some of the areas where this has been tried. The Government is committed to viewing waste as a resource. That is precisely why we seek to maximise recovery and recycling-——

The Minister of State wants to maximise the amount of waste.

——including the recovery of energy from waste. This is obviously a coherent integrated approach and the proper one to take. It is the course being followed by the environmentally most progressive societies including those where a Green Party is or has been in office. This sustainable approach to waste management requires that the necessary infrastructure is put in place including thermal treatment plants, but also a small number of highly engineered landfills. It really is not consistent for Green Party Deputies to rail against both incineration, with energy recovery, and landfill. If they rail against that, what credible alternatives can they offer?

The Minister of State should listen to what we said.

This is an outstanding opportunity for the Green Party to outline its policy clearly for constituents. They deserve an answer and should be given one.

Hear, hear. They will get it.

Incidentally, it is quite wrong to suggest that use of incineration militates against best practice in recycling.

Once it is there it has to keep burning.

The continental EU member states who achieve very high levels of recycling also rely heavily on incineration, with energy recovery. These approaches are not mutually exclusive, but complementary.

What is the incinerator to be fed with?

Those who raise concerns about the health or the environmental impact of waste infrastructure conveniently ignore that Ireland has one of the most stringent regulatory systems in the world. These projects require both planning permission and waste licences. These are matters for the agencies, An Bord Pleanála and the EPA, which have demonstrated their independence.

What about the planning inspectors?

I stress in particular that both the health and the environmental impact concerns have been addressed. In the case of incineration, for example, EU standards which are the benchmark are devised with absolute regard for the best available scientific standards. I will refer to two important statements by Deputy Quinn, who questioned the Poolbeg incinerator. The test of value is whether the project meets the independently set public sector benchmark. In this case it does and this has been verified by the EIA.

Deputy Gilmore spoke about regulation of the private sector. In fairness to the Minister, Deputy Roche, he has clearly indicated that he will bring forward proposals.

I wish to share time with Deputies Cuffe and Sargent, if the Leas-Cheann Comhairle agrees.

There has been much talk about waste to energy or the use of energy cover to explain what is going on. As a councillor at the time when some of these decisions were made in the late 1990s, I confirm that no one ever mentioned energy. This was never on the agenda. It was purely a waste solution problem. In terms of burning, the reality is now 600,000 or 700,000 tonnes at Poolbeg, which originally started off at 300,000 or 400,000 tonnes. The plant inexorably grew in size over recent years. When one considers the energy output from it, one sees this is not an energy facility. With the equivalent of whatever number of chimneys are put into Poolbeg one could build seven turbines within eyesight out on the Kish bank and provide the same amount of energy. If we need to provide that energy we should develop the turbines in the Kish bank, which were planned many years ago.

The energy return from this, however, is remarkably poor. We are using up valuable natural resources. Plastics will have to go into this incinerator to make it burn or else fuel will have to be added. Effectively, we are taking oil-based products, scarce valuable materials which will increase in price, and burning them, and that is a waste of energy. Do not take it from me, take it from the British Plastics Federation, which said in a report on the matter that in energy terms, recycling of plastic made far more sense than incineration. Recycling one aluminium can saves 90% of the energy needed to produce a new one. Recycling 1 kg of plastics saves another 1.5 kgs of CO2 that is needed — and CO2 is our energy measurement as much as anything else these days. Again, that is saved if we are recycling.

Manufacturing newsprint requires 2.5 times the amount of energy that we generate from burning it. Manufacturing glass requires 30 times the energy we would get from burning it. So this does not make energy sense. If we are serious about our energy policy, and we need to be, we certainly need to address it, but incineration will not solve our energy problems. Incineration is about dealing with waste in a certain manner. We do not agree on this side of the House that this is an effective, intelligent way of dealing with it. Matters have changed remarkably in the seven or eight years since the plan for the environment was hatched in the Department and imposed on local authorities around the country. What we have seen in the meantime is that people can, and will, go in the direction about which we are talking. In my council in Dún Laoghaire, in one year between 2004 and 2005, the tonnage brought to civic amenity increased 165%. The tonnage brought to bring banks increased 16%. The tonnage of green bin waste collected increased 25%. People want to do this. They want the alternative. Once they start putting stuff in the green bin, they do not want to go back. We are telling people we now need some of their waste because we need to burn it. That is not the clever way forward. It is not what the people of this city, Cork or any other part of the country want to do. They know they can do the right thing and recycle and that in energy, natural resource and economic terms, as well as in environmental terms, it is the clever thing to do.

Everybody wants to recycle, but they are currently not being given enough opportunity to do so, despite Government pronouncements. The recent Forfás waste management benchmarking report and the European Environment Agency's report, entitled The European environment — State and Outlook 2005, highlighted Ireland's growing waste generation levels. The Forfás report showed that individuals in Ireland produce more waste on average per annum than any of the other nine countries studied. The EEA report placed Ireland 24th out of 25 countries on the same measure.

The Minister of State will argue that increased waste generation figures result from increased economic growth, but does that mean we must wait until the economy slows down before we tackle our waste crisis? Economic growth and a building boom may have made our task more difficult, but that cannot be an acceptable excuse for doing nothing. The plastic bag levy is one of the few examples of the Government adopting measures to dampen waste generation. It is only today that the Minister grudgingly announced that he might consider adding 4 cent to the levy. I am not sure if that will change consumer behaviour. He should have made the legislation open enough in the first place to double the levy, because that would concentrate people's minds.

Many Dubliners have been appalled by the level of litter and waste generated by the introduction of freesheet newspapers. They would be even more appalled if they realised the Government had been in discussion with the newspaper industry for over five years regarding the establishment of a producer responsibility scheme for the industry. To date, those negotiations have produced no results. The policy of the Green Party is to encourage industry to reduce the volume of packaging waste it generates. We need a carrot and a stick approach. We need to provide tax relief to businesses and industries that carry out research and development into redesigning products to extend their life cycle. We need to require manufacturers to make greater use of refillable, returnable containers for their products.

However, this Government sees higher environmental standards as a threat to our economic competitiveness, despite much evidence to the contrary. An English report entitled The Contribution of Good Environmental Regulations to Competitiveness stated that waste minimisation could yield British manufacturers €4.5 billion per annum. In other words, profits can be made by improving environmental quality. However, this Government is not going down that road. The Minister of State's embarrassment on where we stand in the European recycling leagues has led to him announcing recycling volumes in terms of how many times material could fill sports stadia. Second last is still second last, no matter how many times Croke Park can be filled.

The Government established a market development group to identify new applications and markets for recyclable materials, but two years after its establishment, the group has made no report or recommendations. We need a statutory agency charged with promoting research and development on recyclable materials, providing guidance to companies that wish to switch to more environmentally friendly products and providing grants to companies seeking to establish recycling facilities.

In a recent reply to a Dáil question, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government said the costs of introducing deposit and refund infrastructure in Ireland would be prohibitively expensive and that Ireland had gone too far down an alternative route to consider deposit and refund schemes. When I asked him on 9 May whether the Department had carried out any financial and environmental comparisons between these schemes, I was informed that no formal study on the matter had been carried out in Ireland. The Minister is making poor decisions on critically important national issues. This is bad enough, but to make those decisions without carrying out formal studies is completely unacceptable.

The EPA's waste survey for 2004 showed that three quarters of Ireland's recyclable waste stream is exported. I wonder how stringent are the checks which ensure that all the material is recycled. A project on verification of waste destinations revealed irregularities with 30% of these waste shipments. Only one in five of the checks on Irish exports were actually carried out, so we cannot be smug when saying our waste is going to be recycled.

Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil le gach duine a labhair sa díospóireacht, go mórmhór na daoine a thug tacaíocht don rún ón gComhaontas Glas, le Fine Gael, Páirtí an Lucht Oibre, Sinn Féin agus leis na Teachtaí Neamhspleácha.

When we first drafted this motion, it was in response to the shameful growing international waste levels which Forfás highlighted. However, it seems we have an even greater crisis on our hands following this debate, which is the failure of the Minister, Deputy Roche, to take any action to reduce waste levels. Such action has nothing to do with recycling, dumping or burning — it is about reduction. On that yardstick, this Minister and this Government are an abject failure. The Minister's insults — we got plenty of them last night — are no use whatsoever to the communities faced with plans for incinerators, landfills or any of the quick-fix solutions with which this Government has a fixation.

Our motion is an honest attempt to address the need to reduce waste amounts generated under the watch of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, who has responsibility for waste reduction in the first instance. However, we now know that the Minister is more familiar with obscure Canadian rock music than he is with waste reduction. Guelph in Ontario, Canada is an example of a city that faced up to the principle of looking after its own waste locally in every useful way possible. The incentives to reduce, reuse and recycle were strengthened in that city by a ban in the province of Ontario on the location of landfill on agricultural land or any wetland.

There are reasons to be cautious. There is a need for a level of cleanfill, but that is not what we are getting from this Government. Landfill has given rise to a report in The Irish Times entitled Birth Defect Risks Higher for Babies Living near Dumps. This is in reference to a study carried out by Imperial College London, which noted no particular difference between domestic refuse dumps and hazardous waste dumps. When an incinerator was proposed 20 years ago in Guelph, the people said “No”. This was mainly because they did not want to see material burned which could be recycled. As they say about incinerators, “when you get a pig, you have to feed it”.

There are many companies creating jobs that do not want incinerators. Representatives from Wellman International, located on the Meath-Cavan border, have described to me that an incinerator would be a travesty for their company because an incinerator would demand the same material that their company uses for recycling.

There are many examples of incinerators causing untold problems for communities. A newspaper report, entitled Cancer Village Fights for Justice over Incinerator, provides such an example from France. The report states that senior French officials face a toxins inquiry. Is that what the Minister wants to give us and is that what he is proposing? Let the record show that up to now the Minister, Deputy McDowell, has not shown up here for this debate. Likewise, when the Green Party had a previous debate on waste and gave him an opportunity to set out his position on the Poolbeg incinerator plan, he did not show up either.

Will he vote?

The interesting point is that the Minister, Deputy McDowell, now has a difficult decision to make because he knows from a statement made by the Minister, Deputy Roche, on a radio programme this morning that the Poolbeg incinerator plan is Government policy. I wonder if the Minister is elsewhere at the moment considering his resignation, as that would be the only logical thing for him to do.

Ten years ago Montreal had to forfeit a large amount of taxpayers' money to have an incinerator removed. Perhaps the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government needs to come clean about the real costs that will be incurred over the next 30 years if his preferred waste facilities are allowed to be built. The figure of €250 million is the price tag so far for the Poolbeg black box incinerator plan. Meanwhile the first step to be taken, which the Minister, Deputy Roche, has still not made a requirement, is the total segregation of wet material from the remaining dry material. This is now legally required in Toronto and in more than half of the towns, cities and municipalities in Ontario. This results in more than 50% of waste being diverted from landfill from the start in terms of wet or dry material. It is a very simple requirement. The dry materials are then further segregated and any awkward composite items are then collected and returned to the importer or the manufacturer. The Minister needs to get his finger out and use the law we have given him to reduce waste.

In Canada they call this the stewardship programme; here we call it the Waste Management Act 1996. If the Minister reads section 29(3) and (4) of that Bill, he will note the powers contained in it to tackle the importers, manufacturers and people who are polluting and creating the waste. If Ireland can end litter generated from the use of plastic bags, we can also reduce other forms of waste. If Canada can ban Teflon frying pans because of cancer concerns and waste disposal problems, Ireland can do likewise.

The Government has the power to design the taking of waste out of homes, workplaces and countries but it chooses instead to support the polluters and they dump on the people. When the election is held perhaps the polluters will vote for a Fianna Fáil-Progressive Democrats Government but the people certainly will not.

Amendment put.
The Dáil divided: Tá, 61; Níl, 52.

  • Andrews, Barry.
  • Blaney, Niall.
  • Brady, Johnny.
  • Brady, Martin.
  • Brennan, Seamus.
  • Callely, Ivor.
  • Carey, Pat.
  • Carty, John.
  • Collins, Michael.
  • Cooper-Flynn, Beverley.
  • Cregan, John.
  • Curran, John.
  • Davern, Noel.
  • de Valera, Síle.
  • Dennehy, John.
  • Devins, Jimmy.
  • Ellis, John.
  • Fahey, Frank.
  • Finneran, Michael.
  • Fitzpatrick, Dermot.
  • Fleming, Seán.
  • Fox, Mildred.
  • Glennon, Jim.
  • Grealish, Noel.
  • Hoctor, Máire.
  • Jacob, Joe.
  • Kelleher, Billy.
  • Kelly, Peter.
  • Killeen, Tony.
  • Kirk, Seamus.
  • Kitt, Tom.
  • Lenihan, Brian.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • McGuinness, John.
  • Martin, Micheál.
  • Moloney, John.
  • Moynihan, Donal.
  • Moynihan, Michael.
  • Mulcahy, Michael.
  • Nolan, M. J.
  • Ó Cuív, Éamon.
  • Ó Fearghaíl, Seán.
  • O’Connor, Charlie.
  • O’Dea, Willie.
  • O’Donnell, Liz.
  • O’Donovan, Denis.
  • O’Flynn, Noel.
  • O’Keeffe, Batt.
  • O’Malley, Fiona.
  • O’Malley, Tim.
  • Parlon, Tom.
  • Power, Peter.
  • Roche, Dick.
  • Sexton, Mae.
  • Smith, Brendan.
  • Smith, Michael.
  • Wallace, Dan.
  • Wallace, Mary.
  • Wilkinson, Ollie.
  • Woods, Michael.
  • Wright, G. V.

Níl

  • Boyle, Dan.
  • Breen, James.
  • Breen, Pat.
  • Broughan, Thomas P.
  • Bruton, Richard.
  • Burton, Joan.
  • Connaughton, Paul.
  • Connolly, Paudge.
  • Costello, Joe.
  • Cowley, Jerry.
  • Crowe, Seán.
  • Cuffe, Ciarán.
  • Deenihan, Jimmy.
  • Durkan, Bernard J.
  • English, Damien.
  • Enright, Olwyn.
  • Ferris, Martin.
  • Gilmore, Eamon.
  • Gogarty, Paul.
  • Gormley, John.
  • Gregory, Tony.
  • Higgins, Joe.
  • Higgins, Michael D.
  • Howlin, Brendan.
  • Lynch, Kathleen.
  • McCormack, Pádraic.
  • McGrath, Finian.
  • McHugh, Paddy.
  • Mitchell, Olivia.
  • Morgan, Arthur.
  • Murphy, Catherine.
  • Murphy, Gerard.
  • Naughten, Denis.
  • Neville, Dan.
  • Noonan, Michael.
  • Ó Caoláin, Caoimhghín.
  • Ó Snodaigh, Aengus.
  • O’Dowd, Fergus.
  • O’Shea, Brian.
  • O’Sullivan, Jan.
  • Penrose, Willie.
  • Quinn, Ruairí.
  • Rabbitte, Pat.
  • Ring, Michael.
  • Ryan, Eamon.
  • Ryan, Seán.
  • Sargent, Trevor.
  • Sherlock, Joe.
  • Shortall, Róisín.
  • Stagg, Emmet.
  • Twomey, Liam.
  • Upton, Mary.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Kitt and Kelleher; Níl, Deputies Boyle and Neville.
Amendment declared carried.
Question put: "That the motion, as amended, be agreed to."
The Dáil divided: Tá, 61; Níl, 52.

  • Andrews, Barry.
  • Blaney, Niall.
  • Brady, Johnny.
  • Brady, Martin.
  • Brennan, Seamus.
  • Callely, Ivor.
  • Carey, Pat.
  • Carty, John.
  • Collins, Michael.
  • Cooper-Flynn, Beverley.
  • Cregan, John.
  • Curran, John.
  • Davern, Noel.
  • de Valera, Síle.
  • Dennehy, John.
  • Devins, Jimmy.
  • Ellis, John.
  • Fahey, Frank.
  • Finneran, Michael.
  • Fitzpatrick, Dermot.
  • Fleming, Seán.
  • Fox, Mildred.
  • Glennon, Jim.
  • Grealish, Noel.
  • Hoctor, Máire.
  • Jacob, Joe.
  • Kelleher, Billy.
  • Kelly, Peter.
  • Killeen, Tony.
  • Kirk, Seamus.
  • Kitt, Tom.
  • Lenihan, Brian.
  • McEllistrim, Thomas.
  • McGuinness, John.
  • Martin, Micheál.
  • Moloney, John.
  • Moynihan, Donal.
  • Moynihan, Michael.
  • Mulcahy, Michael.
  • Nolan, M. J.
  • Ó Cuív, Éamon.
  • Ó Fearghaíl, Seán.
  • O’Connor, Charlie.
  • O’Dea, Willie.
  • O’Donnell, Liz.
  • O’Donovan, Denis.
  • O’Flynn, Noel.
  • O’Keeffe, Batt.
  • O’Malley, Fiona.
  • O’Malley, Tim.
  • Parlon, Tom.
  • Power, Peter.
  • Roche, Dick.
  • Sexton, Mae.
  • Smith, Brendan.
  • Smith, Michael.
  • Wallace, Dan.
  • Wallace, Mary.
  • Wilkinson, Ollie.
  • Woods, Michael.
  • Wright, G. V.

Níl

  • Boyle, Dan.
  • Breen, James.
  • Breen, Pat.
  • Broughan, Thomas P.
  • Bruton, Richard.
  • Burton, Joan.
  • Connaughton, Paul.
  • Connolly, Paudge.
  • Costello, Joe.
  • Cowley, Jerry.
  • Crowe, Seán.
  • Cuffe, Ciarán.
  • Deenihan, Jimmy.
  • Durkan, Bernard J.
  • English, Damien.
  • Enright, Olwyn.
  • Ferris, Martin.
  • Gilmore, Eamon.
  • Gogarty, Paul.
  • Gormley, John.
  • Gregory, Tony.
  • Higgins, Joe.
  • Higgins, Michael D.
  • Howlin, Brendan.
  • Lynch, Kathleen.
  • McCormack, Pádraic.
  • McGrath, Finian.
  • McHugh, Paddy.
  • Mitchell, Olivia.
  • Morgan, Arthur.
  • Murphy, Catherine.
  • Murphy, Gerard.
  • Naughten, Denis.
  • Neville, Dan.
  • Noonan, Michael.
  • Ó Caoláin, Caoimhghín.
  • Ó Snodaigh, Aengus.
  • O’Dowd, Fergus.
  • O’Shea, Brian.
  • O’Sullivan, Jan.
  • Penrose, Willie.
  • Quinn, Ruairí.
  • Rabbitte, Pat.
  • Ring, Michael.
  • Ryan, Eamon.
  • Ryan, Seán.
  • Sargent, Trevor.
  • Sherlock, Joe.
  • Shortall, Róisín.
  • Stagg, Emmet.
  • Twomey, Liam.
  • Upton, Mary.
Tellers: Tá, Deputies Kitt and Kelleher; Níl, Deputies Boyle and Neville.
Question declared carried.
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