Some 646 producers of electrical and electronic equipment,EEE, were registered with the WEEE register by close of business Friday, 21 October 2005. My Department does not have a record of the total number of undertakings with producer obligations in accordance with the provisions of the EU Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, WEEE. However, I am advised that the WEEE register had an initial target of registering 300 producers.
Implementation of the WEEE directive has been achieved as a result of close co-operation between all stakeholders — producers, retailers and both central and local government. This process began with the establishment of a task force representative of all relevant sectors, including producers and retailers, in February 2003, to draw up proposals for implementing the directive and no less than two extensive public consultation processes. My Department has been and continues to be available to provide advice and assistance throughout this process. My Department has also taken out advertising in the national press to draw the attention of producers and retailers to their obligations under the WEEE directive. An area of my Department's website has been devoted to WEEE and a number of guidance documents for stakeholders can be found at www.environ.ie.
My Department is monitoring the operation of the scheme closely and where barriers to effective implementation are identified these will be addressed. The core components of the scheme are working well between retail outlets and local authority civic amenity sites household WEEE is being collected from over 100 collection points around the country.