Vol. 570 No. 2
528 Mr. R. Bruton asked the Minister for the Environment Heritage and Local Government the legal obligations for organisations which drop leaflets seeking to collect unwanted articles with regard to the provision of identity details, addresses, landline telephone numbers and verification of rights to collect; and if his attention has been drawn to information on the extent of bogus collectors. [18350/03]
Section 34(1) of the Waste Management Act 1996 requires the collector of waste, where waste is collected on a commercial basis, to obtain a waste collection permit from the relevant local authority. The Waste Management (Collection Permit) Regulations 2001 set out the regulatory framework for the making of permit applications. Under article 7 of the regulations, an application for a permit must include considerable details regarding the applicant. These include, inter alia, the applicant's name, the trade name(s) of the business, the address(es) and telephone numbers etc of the principal place of business, the types and quantities of waste to be collected and the areas in which the activity will be carried out, as well as the location of any facility that will be used by the applicant, supported by the reference numbers of any relevant waste permit or licence for such facilities.
Local authorities are directly responsible for the enforcement of the permitting regime, and my Department has no direct function in this matter.
Under section 32 of the Waste Management Act 1996, holders of waste have a general duty of care which provides that they should transfer the control of waste to appropriately authorised persons only. In that regard, a waste collector's authorised status can be ascertained by requiring the collector to demonstrate that he or she is in possession of the appropriate waste collection permit.
I should point out that under the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland, ASAI, codes of practice, advertisers have primary responsibility for ensuring that their advertisements are legal and do not contain anything that incites people to break the law.
