Earlier this month I launched a new national waste policy for the period 2020-2025, “A Waste Action Plan for a Circular Economy”. This plan contains a range of measures to reform and strengthen waste management with a greater focus on prevention through product design and consumer choice. The measures outlined in the Waste Action Plan will ensure that we continue to meet our European targets for waste and will reflect the level of ambition in the waste and climate areas at EU level. It sets out a range of objectives and targets for the State and the measures by which to achieve them, including the introduction of a recovery levy to drive higher recycling rates, move higher up the waste hierarchy and reduce our reliance on recovery over the medium term.
While the clear ambition of the plan is to reduce the amount of waste generated, we will still require waste treatment infrastructure to manage waste which does arise. In this context, the Environmental Protection Agency is the competent authority for granting and enforcing industrial and waste licences and undertakes an annual programme of audits and inspections of EPA-licensed facilities. It is, therefore, not appropriate for me to comment or interfere in any way in a licence application, the determination of which is a statutory function of the EPA under Part IV of the EPA Act 1992.
