Dáil Éireann Debate, Tuesday - 28 February 2023
64. Deputy Paul McAuliffe asked the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications his plans to improve legislation to allow for the use of CCTV for enforcement against breaches of waste and litter legislation. [9925/23]
View answerWill the Minister of State outline the plans of the Government has to implement the provisions of the circular economy Bill to assist local authorities in the use of CCTV to tackle illegal dumping? We know it is not the silver bullet it is often presented as, but it is an important tool for local authorities to tackle the scourge of illegal dumping in many of our communities.
I thank the Deputy for asking this question, which is close to my heart and which I have been following closely since we legislated for it. The policy document, A Waste Action Plan for a Circular Economy, contains a commitment to data-proof all waste enforcement legislation to ensure all available and emerging audiovisual recording equipment, including CCTV, can be used in a manner that is compliant with the general data protection regulation, GDPR.
My Department has engaged with the County and City Management Association, CCMA, the Department of Justice and the Data Protection Commissioner, DPC, to draft suitable legislation to give effect to this commitment. This legislation, amending both the Litter Pollution Act and the Waste Management Act, is contained in the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act.
Sections 22 and 33 of the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act require that the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA, prepares and submits draft codes of practice to the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications for approval for the purposes of setting standards for the operation of CCTV and other mobile recording devices to deter environmental pollution and to facilitate the prevention, detection and prosecution of both littering and illegal dumping offences. The LGMA is currently working on the preparation of these codes of practice. Once approved, local authorities will then be in a position to initiate litter and waste enforcement measures involving the GDPR-compliant use of technologies such as CCTV.
I have been in contact with that committee as it develops its code of practice. It has been working with the DPC to ensure it is compliant with the GDPR rules and I am waiting for the committee to come back to the Department for ministerial approval of its guidelines. It is keen to have this and to have something effective. CCTV can be used for littering offences. For dumping offences, our legislation allows for body cameras and for drones to be used to catch people who are involved in more industrial and profit-motivated fly-tipping, illegal dumps and that type of activity. Therefore, the types of interventions are proportionate to the size of a crime. You do not need a drone to follow somebody who is dropping litter.
I welcome the update from the Minister of State. He referred to earlier that many of us in this House have served time on local authorities. The issue of illegal dumping was one we were all extremely frustrated with. When it was possible in Dublin City Council, sometimes when it was done at night-time or at obscure angles or when the face was covered, it did not provide the evidence that was needed. There were occasions when strong investigative tools were used by local authorities to try to find the people who carried out illegal dumping.
Across all our constituencies there are Tidy Towns groups that go out and give up their free time. In my own constituency I think of the Tidy Towns groups in Finglas, Ballymun, Meakstown and Santry, as well as the hundreds of environmental groups that operate underneath them. They need these guidelines to be issued as soon as possible. They need for local authorities to have the ability to use this technology. I encourage the Minister of State to ensure the LGMA presents this code as soon as possible.
Many Deputies are aware that there were problems in the past with obtaining evidence to get prosecutions because of challenges under privacy legislation. That is why we have to be so careful that we are ensured privacy-wise that we are compliant with GDPR law in order that we do not get challenged or, if we are challenged, that we can win those challenges. The Deputy is right that Tidy Towns groups around the country are sick of having to clean up after people who are either negligent or who are criminally making money from dumping. I spent some time in the north-east inner city with Dublin City Council's cleaning crew, so I have experienced the problems first-hand. They are going around seven days a week at 6 a.m., picking up rubbish and clearing streets. The work they do is incredible but the problems are intense. The volume of material that is being dumped is horrific. I am forming a forum of all the stakeholders, including the Department of Social Protection, the Residential Tenancies Board, the Revenue Commissioners and local activists to try to find a way to eliminate this problem.
I welcome the Minister of State's visit to the north inner city. He is welcome to come and visit my own constituency. He is right; it does go in scale. It can be a matter of a bag in a bin or it can be a matter of a washing machine and a half a tonne of a truck in a laneway. We need proportionate responses and we also need swift action in this regard. I urge the LGMA and the CCMA to present the code. Once that is done and local authorities are in a position to use CCTV legally within the frameworks of privacy legislation and so on, it will be up to us in this House to put pressure on those organisations to help us to implement the law that we facilitated.
Dublin City Council spends nearly €1 million per year. That could be spent on preventative measures and it could also be spent on many other positive projects in our community. Senator Malcolm Byrne referred to the figure of nearly €90 million being spent across the country. I thank the Minister of State for the work he has done on this project and I urge him to continue.
I thank the Minister of State for the significant body of work he and his Department have done, particularly on the passage of that Act. Deputy Leddin, who is the Chair of the committee, is present. We put in the hours too, so to speak. I wanted to take this discussion about the protocols to Fingal and to address the issue of where local authorities decline to collect dumped materials. That often happens in rural parts of north Dublin in laneways where the boundaries between ditches etc. are not well defined. There is clear evidence of materials being dumped, often including tyres, I am afraid to say, among other things. This area is on the fringe between Dublin city and Fingal, where landowners often have to spend an enormous amount of money removing such materials that clearly have been dumped from the public road. It is often difficult for farmers to justify the expenditure when it happens repeatedly. I am very pleased to see this legislation in place and I hope the LGMA comes through with the protocols in order that local authorities can get this up and running in a legal manner.
Deputy McAuliffe is right that we need to have positive measures. This is not just about enforcement, catching people and criminality. We have a number of different schemes to promote reduction in litter. There is an anti-dumping initiative, which provides €3 million to local authorities for clean-up operations for removing illegal waste when it has been dumped, for household bulky waste initiatives such as a so-called mattress amnesty and for getting rid of sofas, as well as awareness campaigns, preventative measures and so on.
However, awareness campaigns and these types of positive measures do not work on criminals who are making a living out of this. It does not matter how many times you show them an advertisement that tells them they should not dump; they will do it unless they are caught. There is room as well for evidence gathering and criminal sanction. People who give up their free time to clean up their local area and who go out and pick things up find it galling to then go out and see a sofa being dumped in a field.
Hear, hear.
That is why we need the two things. We need the positive things that help people do the right thing. We also need criminal sanction and evidence against people who are criminals and who are destroying our beautiful environment.
