Seanad Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 22 May 2024

I move:

That Seanad Éireann:

notes that:

- Ireland has a privatised waste collection system with a small number of very large operators; in many urban areas, there is significant competition for the market with the result that in some areas, multiple bin lorries from competing companies will travel the same streets; in other areas, market failure arises with no service provision and in other parts of the country, there are monopoly-like operations whereby households face no price competition nor price regulation;

- the current system produces unnecessary duplication, and contributes to increased carbon emissions;

- there is no national regulator of the waste sector, a lack of transparency over the profits made, and practices within the industry;

- illegal dumping and littering are an ongoing scourge, and our municipal waste recycling rates remain too low at only 41 percent, well below our European Union (EU) target of 55 percent by 2025;

- local authorities are spending an estimated €100 million per year cleaning up illegal dumping;

further notes that:

- the publicly owned Bord na Móna Recycling operates waste collection in parts of Leinster and north Munster servicing over 135,000 customers but intends to now sell this business;

- the 2014 EU Concession Directive allows for tendering by the State or agency of the State for services of general public interest including waste management;

calls for:

- re-municipalisation of waste collection as a public service and amendment of the Waste Management Act 1996 to allow local authorities to have a single tender for waste collection;

- the Government to stop Bord na Móna from selling its waste management business which should be retained as a public asset and used to develop a National Recycling Company;

- local authorities to increase the provision of public bins and civic recycling centres, and underground waste bins in urban centres to reduce street clutter;

- the Government to immediately streamline the process agreed with the Local Government Management Agency on the use of CCTV cameras by local authorities;

the introduction of a bin waiver scheme to support low-income households and those with additional medical needs.”

I thank the Minister of State for coming into the House today. We in the Labour Party believe that Ireland needs a serious overhaul of how waste is collected and regulated across every county in this country. The privatised system of waste collection is not working. It is not working when there are pockets of this country, particularly in the Leinster region but right across the country, that still do not have a waste collection service. Collection services here in Dublin are at 92% but should be at 100%. The privatised system of waste collection has not worked because the promise of competition has failed. We see out in Dublin 15 a single operator hiking up prices because it can get away with it as there is no competition. In other areas, we have multiple bin lorries traipsing after each other with all of the congestion, confusion and diesel emissions that go with that. Do any of us really believe that competition is truly compatible with addressing the environmental concerns of our communities? The privatised system of waste collection is not working when private bin collection companies are allowed to cream very significant profits from bin collection while local authorities have to foot the bill for everything else, whether that is the bring centres, illegal dumping, composting or other recycling facilities.

Crucially, the privatised system does not work because it does not allow for the necessary investment in waste management in this country. The Labour Party believes there needs to be serious investment in how waste is collected here in Dublin and right across the country, including in underground bin collection systems, shared waste collection points, more bring centres and systems where households can actually compost. We need to look to the likes of Barcelona, The Hague, Rotterdam and many other European cities where these systems have proven possible and ask if we could do the same here. It is hard to see local authorities investing in that infrastructure when we have a two-tier system whereby private operators get to generate a profit from charges to households while local authorities are left to deal with all of the rest. We understand that local authorities are spending around €100 million each year dealing with illegal dumping and littering alone.

The fifth reason that privatisation is failing is that the waste market is no ordinary competitive market. As the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission, CCPC, identified in its 2018 report, waste operators need to operate like a natural monopoly in order to be viable. We are already seeing this, particularly in parts of Dublin, where one company, Beauparc, has an estimated 55% share of the waste market. This has enormous implications for pricing and the prices charged to households. It also has serious implications for the State. It creates an overwhelming over-reliance on one company, with all of the risks that are associated with that. It is like depending on the banks for a vital public service but having it in private hands and, of course, when a company like that fails, it becomes everyone's problem.

Earlier today we had a very interesting presentation to the Oireachtas waste management group,a working group involving Deputy Darren O'Rourke and a number of other TDs and Senators, including myself.

We had a representative of the European Federation of Public Service Unions who is a member of a Norwegian trade union before us to talk about the failure - the bankruptcy - of a really big waste operator in Norway, which led to the remunicipalisation of that service back into local authorities because, in effect, households and local authorities were left in the lurch. When private operators fail, it is not just their problem, it becomes a problem for households and all of us. We must ask ourselves if we want to become overwhelmingly reliant on a private operator when there is no proper regulation in place.

I hope the Minister of State is aware of it, but it is important to put the information on the floor of the House, so I draw his attention to it. We are looking at the prospect of the big operators becoming even bigger because Bord na Móna, a semi-State company, is proposing to sell AES, which is a subsidiary company, and it is looking increasingly likely that Beauparc will purchase this company. This has all sorts of implications both in making Beauparc an even bigger player in the Irish market, but also in terms of a semi-State company selling a vital resource and service effectively into private hands. We must ask the question: if the collection of waste is both a private problem and a public problem, who is the current system designed to benefit? It currently benefits the big operators and their profits. It is certainly not benefiting households in terms of where that money is going. It should be reinvested in waste management. We have very serious concerns about the current market and the current model of bin collection in this country and we want to see an overhaul. We want to see a move away from the Wild West situation where anyone who meets very basic criteria is granted a waste collection licence, to one where one company is contracted to collect waste in the city on a service concession basis.

We want to see a move away from the frankly bizarre system whereby we see all sorts of obligations now imposed on waste collectors through the Bill put forward in 2022, which we very much supported, in broadening out of obligations on waste collectors regarding brown waste. However, it does not have real teeth. There is no proper regulator or oversight of waste collection. It is a great example of how there was a good idea but it is simply not implementable, which is the case with the brown waste collection, in particular in Dublin's north inner city, but also in other parts of the country, where they do not have bins but rely on bags. There is simply no way of being able to separate food and garden waste because customers do not have bins. There is no solution in place at this point in time for that. We will not see the private operators investing to ensure that there is a solution because why would they? Nor do we see the local authorities-----

We understand that a significant number of legislative changes are required to be put forward. I am sure Senator Wall will indulge me while I go through them. Under the Waste Management Act 1996, there is no specific obligation on local authorities to collect waste because of the number of disapplications that exist in the legislation. Under the Competition Act 2002, it is difficult for a local authority to effectively grant a contract to a single operator. We know from the 2009 case taken by Panda against the four Dublin local authorities that there was a challenge with regard to moving to a tender for a single operator. We believe that the EU concessions Act and the recognition of waste collection as a service of general economic interest is crucial to ensuring that our legislation can be brought into line so that local authorities across this country can issue a single tender to ensure that waste collection can be collected across the whole of a local authority area so that we do not see cherry-picking, and to ensure there is a control over prices and that, ultimately, whatever money is generated from charges can over the longer term be recycled into proper waste management systems in this country and not into the arms of a very small number of operators.

Finally, in recent years, trade unions and some political parties have been campaigning for this. In some ways, we are hugely grateful for the work of SIPTU. I am also very grateful that my colleague, Pat McCabe, is here in the Gallery with us today. He is working alongside other unions such as Connect and Fórsa, among others. They are talking about working conditions in the sector but also warning about the dangers and risks of the system we are walking ourselves into at the moment. We are concentrating even greater power in the waste management sector in the hands of very few. In fact, Beauparc is owned by an Australian bank and vulture fund. The question must be asked: do we want that for our country? Do we want that for a vital service in our cities and urban areas?

Great credit must go to the More Power To You campaign, and also to our colleagues in Dublin City Council who have spearheaded a campaign to ensure that Dublin can be at the forefront of those changes in the future. They requires us in the Legislature to make those legislative changes. We need to see them here. Our motion is the start of that.

I second the motion. I also welcome the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, to the House. I thank my Labour Party colleagues for their assistance in tabling this very important motion. In particular, I thank my colleague, Senator Sherlock, for all her hard work in preparation for this important matter, and the work she continues to do with the three unions that she has named, that have been involved in the Oireachtas committee process as well.

The issue I want to concentrate on is illegal dumping, which I and others feel is a direct consequence of the multiple different companies and charges for waste collection in the country.

The Minister of State will be familiar with the Labour Party's Local Government (Use of CCTV in Prosecution of Offences) Bill 2021, which we discussed here on Second Stage. I introduced the Bill on behalf of the party, and we discussed it again during the debate on the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Bill 2022, which was introduced by the Minister of State. At that stage, he and colleagues such as Senator Malcolm Byrne, who also introduced a Bill, hoped it would be incorporated into the circular economy Bill to allow local authorities to use CCTV and other technologies for the prevention, detection and prosecution of illegal dumping. On 9 February this year, the Minister of State announced that he was giving county councils a legal basis to use CCTV for litter and dumping black spots, following a lengthy discussion with the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA. The problem since then is the lengths to which local authorities have to go to set up a camera in the first place.

I want to go through the procedure facing local authorities. Among many issues, the code of practice stipulates that where a local authority considers that the installation and operation of a CCTV scheme may be an appropriate use of technology for the purposes I have just outlined, a CCTV proposal is to be submitted to an oversight board, which, in turn, must demonstrate the necessity and proportionality of the intended CCTV scheme by means of a local data protection impact assessment, DPIA, before the oversight board will be able to recommend its installation to the chief executive for final approval. Any proposal for a CCTV scheme must be approved, therefore, by the chief executive of each local authority. Under the code of practice, a CCTV proposal shall only be considered justifiable and reasonable if an authorised person can demonstrate to the oversight board that less intrusive reasonable steps have already been taken to deter environmental pollution. These proposals include increased lighting in an area prone to offences, improved signage, more frequent inspections and increased public awareness campaigns.

Prior to placing a CCTV proposal before an oversight board, a DPIA must be conducted. A draft local assessment must be submitted to the data protection officer for review and approved by the director of services before being submitted, along with the business case, to the oversight board. An integral part of the DPIA business case process is that an appropriate public consultation should take place.

The level of consultation, I am told, will be determined by the extent to which the introduction of CCTV camera schemes increases the risks to data subjects by its introduction. Next, CCTV shall only be introduced to address and resolve an identifiable and specific problem constituting offences under the Waste Management Act 1996. To that end, CCTV shall only be deployed for specific operational tasks in specific designated locations and not used for general patrol or surveillance.

When we discussed this matter as part of our debate on the circular economy Bill, when I introduced my Bill and when Senator Malcolm Byrne introduced his Bill, we hoped that this provision would be up and running by now. I have read a recent reply the Minister of State gave to a colleague of mine in Kildare County Council, Councillor Aoife Breslin, in which he said that CCTV cameras can now be used by local authorities. I have just detailed a seven-stage process that local authorities must undergo to erect a camera in the first place. My colleague has outlined the fact that local authorities spend anything up to €100 million, as we discussed during our debate on the circular economy Bill, on cleaning up illegal waste yet local authorities must undergo almost a seven-stage process to erect a camera to deter and prosecute illegal dumping. It is red tape and it is completely unbelievable that after all we have been through, after all the discussions that we have had in this House with the Minister of State, and the LGMA, that this is what we are now faced with. All local authorities and council representatives to whom I have spoken just say that this system is unworkable.

I ask the Minister of State, in the context of our Private Member's Bill, to review this with the LGMA and whoever else he has to work with because this process is simply unworkable. Also, by the time the seven-stage process has been completed, the culprits will have got away and that figure of €100 million will have increased. I am sure that we can all agree in this House that the €100 million that is spent, on average, by local authorities to clean up after illegal dumping could much better be spent on public parks, playgrounds, etc., like we discussed during our debate on the circular economy Bill.

Again, I plead with the Minister of State to get something more workable into the system and let us start using CCTV and other methods to prevent illegal dumping as it is ruining our countryside. Everywhere one goes, whether it is the bogs, rivers, etc., one can see that illegal dumping has taken over. It is not just in the countryside but also in urban areas. This was a solution. Last February, when the Minister of State announced this it was very welcome but, unfortunately, it has become unworkable and I look forward to his response.

Yes, perfect. I welcome the Minister of State. I thank the Labour Party for tabling this motion on the very important issue of waste collection, which has gone through a myriad of different regimes and changes over the years. Whether we have an ideal system or not I cannot say. I come from Galway and waste collection is not an issue that has exercised people for a number of years but the situation is probably different in Dublin. As far as I can see, the model used in Galway seems to work okay because I have not received many complaints about it but that might be different in other parts and other local authorities.

I very much agree with the concerns expressed about illegal dumping and the need for greater regulation, greater use of the existing powers and the need to enhance the powers that relate to CCTV. There are ongoing issues with people dumping waste on bog roads. Moreover, the issue of burning wires to extract copper is an issue that has been raised on numerous occasions. The only way to resolve these problems is to ensure there is adequate CCTV and there are powers to prosecute.

I have raised the issue of brown bins here before in respect of food waste. There is a plan to roll out the service across all of the countryside. I am not sure when that will take place but agreement has been reached. Can the Minister of State update us on how fast all parts of rural Ireland will receive brown bins, if they have not got them at present? The 500-person cap in respect of receiving brown bins heretofore has meant that many substantial rural areas did not receive coverage of the brown bin and they would like to see that.

One issue that people face in many parts of rural areas is that collection trucks cannot drive down some side roads or small roads and people are encouraged to bring their bags to the head of a road. If bags are left at the head of a road then there is a risk they will be opened by wild animals, pets, birds or whatever else, thus causing rubbish to be strewn around the area. I refer to areas where there is not a turning circle at the end of a road so for safety and everything else it is difficult for trucks to collect rubbish. Obviously there is competition and competition can often be healthy but if multiple trucks must travel on urban roads then they can cause a certain amount of concern. The brown bins in my area are collected every fortnight on a Tuesday, and black bins and recycling are collected on the Thursday. If companies have different collection days, and their customers are different people on a certain street, one can imagine how a racket would be created very often with multiple pick-ups. I have not experienced that situation at home but I can see how it could be an issue.

The motion is interesting in respect of Bord na Móna Recycling. Again, it would be regrettable if the company is getting out. Obviously a decision has been made and I am not sure what powers the Minister has to consider the matter. I presume that the decision was made and agreed by the board. Were the decision to have an impact on customers and to result in a lesser service, then that would be of concern.

On the calls for the re-municipalisation of waste collection, again it is a difficult area. In the past, local authorities had difficulty with ensuring there were sufficient landfill places. Creating a landfill place is not the most popular endeavour in communities. It is not something that the majority of communities would welcome, which creates difficulties in providing such necessary services. As for the incinerator at Ringsend, or is it Poolbeg?

I welcome the Minister of State and thank the Labour Party Senators for tabling this motion as part of Private Members' business. As Senator Sherlock has rightly said, the motion is the beginning of a debate on waste.

At the outset, I will state that I believe in competition. I believe in the public and the private having fair access to the market and competing. I was a county councillor for many years. Like the Minister of State, I served on Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council, so I know its experience of managing its waste. I spoke to numerous elected county councillors in the past week to prepare some thoughts I wanted to share here today. I found that the views were mixed and many said that waste management should be opened up to the market. It must be a fair market. Again, I take what the Senators have said, when presenting this motion, that we need regulation and a regulator. That is really important too. On the re-municipalisation of waste collection, I am not 100% sure about that. My gut instinct says that we can have partially both. I take on board what Senator Kyne said about a whole load of trucks collecting waste at different times on, say, a Thursday. Such a situation is not proper or sustainable way to manage our resources.

I also thank the Library and Research Service for preparing a note for this debate. I will not go into great detail about it because the Minister of State and every Senator can look at the note online. The note states that the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, and the Central Statistics Office collect statistics on waste management, which is extremely important. Therefore, anyone can dip into that and see the issues involved.

I draw the Minister of State's attention to the European Union (Household Food Waste and Bio-waste) (Amendment) Regulations 2023. These regulations include a number of new requirements on waste collectors and their customers. For example, there is the obligation to provide their household customers with a food waste collection service - a brown bin - from 1 January 2024.

Waste collectors are now obliged to keep records of customers not availing of a food waste collection service and to make this information available to the relevant local authority if requested to do so. All householders are now obliged to segregate their food waste and either have the food waste collected by an authorised collector or compost the food waste, among other options. There are a number of issues in regard to the role of the local authority. Waste collectors are now required to provide their household customers with a garden waste collection service. This is all under the EU regulations. The requirement for segregated food and garden waste collection will divert this waste stream from landfill.

Having said that, let us look at Dublin City Council, which is closer to home, in the city where this Parliament is located. Currently, as of today, bags are still being used for waste disposal in more than 900 Dublin streets, although Dublin City Council is reviewing which streets. We now have all these collections going on in plastic bags. That is an issue.

In order to be fully informed in this debate, we must look at the end of the process and where this waste is going. Is it going to landfill or elsewhere? The four Dublin local authorities - South Dublin County Council, Fingal County Council, Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council and Dublin City Council - are involved with Covanta at Poolbeg. The big issue a few years ago was whether there would be the capacity to feed the incinerator with waste, and if they would be penalised for not feeding the necessary waste. The most recent spring newsletter from 2024 has a picture of Eamon Ryan on the front of it, on a visit to the site. Covanta announced that 4 million tonnes – a milestone for the centre – of waste was put through the incinerator. We know the plans to generate heat – the spin-off of incineration. We also know that it is works best when it is mixed waste. If we are to put a policy in place for bin collection and the number of containers for waste collection at the door, we must look at what is the end result of this waste. If all this waste is going to one place, that is, for incineration, which is by far a better option than landfill, we do not need segregated waste.

The experts say that we need more incineration. Dresden has one of the finest incineration facilities in the world. There is very little byproduct of incineration but what is left – the rakings – go into concrete production. We must look at all of that. When we look at the success of the Poolbeg incinerator operator we see that there are major community initiatives. More than €1 million has been granted to local communities, so there is buy-in from them. The local authorities took a punt on this and it is working. I believe that the public and private waste companies should operate hand in hand. The system should be regulated. There should be tenders for the use and collection of waste.

Since I was elected to the Seanad I have stood up here day in and day out and argued for subsidiarity in decision-making by our 31 local authorities on how they manage their affairs. I say, yet again, that I do not want to be part of handing down a diktat to local authorities about how they manage their waste. I accept there must be an overarching policy, strict regulation and independent validation of the regulation, but let us talk to the local authorities. Let us talk to the CCMA and about the GMA to see where we can go. If it is agreed that incineration is the long-term Government policy then the mixing of waste and how it is lifted at source at doors is a key component of that bigger debate. Let us have local authorities or groups of local authorities collaborating with each other. I will finish on this point. They must be able to decide what they want to do. We are talking about giving power back to the elected members and local councils to make decisions about how they operate and manage their own waste and manage their own local authorities themselves.

I thank the Minister of State for coming to the House. I am often accused of talking rubbish in here but today I am literally going to talk about rubbish and the impact on our local communities.

I thank my Labour Party colleagues for introducing this motion, in particular, Senator Sherlock, who has led out on this. I also refer to my Labour Party colleague, Councillor Kevin Donoghue, who has led on this on Dublin City Council in recent years. I never met anyone who was so animated about the future of waste management as that man. In July 2019, Dublin City Council passed a cross-party, composite motion calling for the remunicipalisation of household waste services. A cross-party working group was established by the council to consider how this might be advanced. Among the group's recommendations was a suggestion that DCC's executive would provide funding to conduct research to support the development of a new roadmap for waste management in the city. I have the report here. It was published in January 2023 by the Institute of Public Administration and is on this exact topic. The report, titled Research in respect of the remunicipalisation of waste services in Dublin City Council, reviews the approach to waste in Dublin through a comparative analysis with the waste collection approaches pertaining in four other European cities. One of the findings of the report is that in 2022, 11 companies were registered as having permits to collect waste in the DCC administrative area. Four of these companies: Greyhound Household, Key Waste Management Limited, Pádraig Thornton Waste Disposal Limited, and Pandagreen Limited, between them accounted for almost three quarters of the market. One of these companies, Greyhound Household, which along with Pandagreen Limited, is part of the Beauparc Group collects 55% of domestic bins.

The report also found that Dublin is the only one of the five cities surveyed with a fully privatised system of waste collection. In all other cities there is a strong element of public involvement, with the waste either collected by the municipality directly by publicly owned companies or with publicly owned companies managing the services but tendering among private operations for kerbside waste collection.

Another issue that was raised in the report is that illegal dumping is not a major issue in other European cities but it is an issue here in Dublin. Illegal dumping, as opposed to littering, is not perceived to be a problem in the comparator cities. Waste is collected from all households or can be brought to civic amenity points. DCC indicates that 3,400 tonnes of illegally dumped waste was collected in Dublin city in 2020. As part of our motion we would like to empower Dublin City Council and other local authorities to now use the powers available to them to provide CCTV to tackle illegal dumping. My colleague, Senator Wall, outlined this proposal. Illegal dumping is a scourge. It is actually hard to believe that we are an outlier in this area, given how prevalent it is. I do not think any of us has driven through Dublin or other major cities without seeing illegal dumping. It is an entirely normal thing to witness. When I read the report I was stunned to learn that it is just not a problem in other cities, given that it is such an ingrained problem in our society.

The data from this report support our call for the remunicipalisation of waste collection. We are an outlier in Europe with our fully privatised waste collection. The report goes through a couple of different scenarios for how we might collect waste in Dublin and how the system might operate. My colleague, Senator Sherlock, has outlined some of those. We would like to see DCC and other local authorities recommencing domestic waste collection.

Other options are also outlined in the report, such as tendering for waste collection, but I do not think we can continue with the status quo. That is not happening in the four Dublin local authority areas, although perhaps it happens in other areas. It does not seem to be working in Kildare either. I have a few other colleagues around the country who, since we put this motion together, have said that it is not working for them.

Another issue regarding waste collection services was raised with me by Councillor Darragh Moriarty. He outlined that in some parts of Dublin where there are terraced houses, especially in the inner city area, they have difficulties with waste collection. It is difficult for them to have wheelie bins as they do not have front gardens or rear access. Therefore, in most cases, they have general heavy duty waste bags, which means they are not separating their general waste and their food waste. We have all heard of the incidents with seagulls. The new national legislation means that these households will now need to separate their waste but most bin providers are not going to let them do this without a wheelie bin, as brown bags could be turned over by seagulls and foxes. However, they cannot have wheelie bins, so they are stuck. The system is not working for them. The roads are literally too narrow.

Dublin City Council has only three bring centres that accept food waste, so it is not a realistic option for these households to do that. As we have sought, perhaps there needs to be a big increase in the number of civic centres that we have, especially ones that also accept food waste. I have been in Europe and I have seen what look like giant waste bins that are shared among the houses on each road. I was very struck by that, as it seems like a much more efficient way of doing things.

We have great civic centres. One was recently opened in Ballymun. I was there the other day and I thought it was brilliant. There is also the civic centre in Drogheda, which became like a monthly tradition in my family. We loaded up the car and off we all went.

Another marvellous Labour Party colleague of mine, James Joy, who is running for Cork City Council in the Cork City north west ward, outlined his priority to argue for waste collection and disposal services to be brought back under the control of Cork City Council.

In James's view, the current system is contributing to the city's litter problem. He has been out every week cleaning up his area in north-west Cork city and reporting illegal dumping, including piles of discarded rubbish, to the council on a daily basis. I can only assume at this point that he has a direct line to the council as he is so often out cleaning up and reporting rubbish.

The current system is just not compatible with our environmental and aesthetic responsibilities. It is not compatible with being fair to the people who need to use waste management services. That is why we put forward this motion. It is balanced and reasonable. I hope the Minister of State will take it into consideration.

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Ossian Smyth, for engaging with this all-important motion. I thank my colleagues in the Labour Party for bringing it forward. Illegal dumping is something we all face, in both urban and rural areas. It is not confined to either but occurs in both. Living in a city centre, I see a large number of public dustbins being used for domestic refuse. I have seen people posting small bags through the hole in the bin. Even though the holes are now quite small, people still manage to get bags through them. This is an issue we need to tackle nationally.

The motion calls for a bin waiver scheme. In Limerick, such a scheme is in operation. Does it work? It does in some cases but not in all. It is operated out of the resources of the local authority and is aimed at people on very low incomes, including those on the basic State pension. However, people who are on a basic private pension do not qualify for the scheme. There is a discrepancy in that regard. I would love to see a national scheme introduced to support people on lower incomes. There are many people who are asset rich but cash poor. I would like to see those people being looked after, as well as those with disabilities. There are people who genuinely find the cost of refuse collection prohibitive.

I would also like to see a national campaign encouraging dog owners to scoop the poop. A large number of local authorities have no scoop-the-poop bins. Such facilities were previously in place in certain parts of Limerick city but not in others. While the message to dog owners is "any bag, any bin", people are still less inclined to put dog waste into the bigger bin. When the small dog poo bins were available, people used them. In some places around the country, poop bags can be seen hanging off the bottoms of the bins. If people are out for a walk with their dog and forget their bag, it would be helpful if bags were available. Some local authorities do that.

We all want to see cleaner cities and a cleaner countryside. Many farmers have to deal with people throwing plastic waste from their cars. That material is eaten by the farm animals, which is not good for them. We do not see as much illegal dumping as we used to, but it is still happening. Many local authorities had cameras installed but, because of the general data protection regulation, GDPR, they were unable to use the footage as proof of illegal dumping. It was a chicken-and-egg situation. The cameras were there for a valid reason, namely, to catch people engaged in illegal dumping, but the evidence they produced could not be used. That issue has been sorted out to some extent but some people who were caught on camera could not be prosecuted because of the regulations that are in place. The Minister of State might take a look at that issue.

Providing a free recycling service might encourage people to recycle more. Some people still put everything in the one bin. I would like to see some sort of incentive to encourage recycling. Younger people are now educating their parents and grandparents but, for many years, people put everything in the one bin. It is about encouraging and teaching householders to segregate their rubbish.

The sentiment behind the motion represents the right approach. I look forward to the Minister of State's response.

I welcome the Minister of State. On behalf of Sinn Féin, I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward this important motion. I welcome the debate on waste management. I will focus my remarks on the municipalisation of waste disposal. I have been proud to see my colleague and comrade, Councillor Daithí Doolan, playing a leading role on this issue in Dublin City Council over the years. A coalition of political parties and trade unions brought their demands in this regard to the Oireachtas last year, organised by Fórsa, SIPTU and Sinn Féin. After that presentation, there could be no doubt about what needs to be done in terms of bringing bin collection back into public ownership, where it belongs.

A report by the Institute of Public Administration highlighted that Dublin is the Wild West of waste collection services in Europe. The bin companies no longer serve the interests of householders or the environment. A survey found that 14% of consumers were not getting the service for which they paid. We have been led to believe the EU is making Ireland deliver privatisation in the waste management sector. We have ended up with a fragmented system in which each company is competing with the others for every household contract. Multiple bin lorries are driving down city streets, duplicating work and driving up emissions and air pollution. The cost savings and lower bills from competition never materialised because of the waste built into the system.

This cannot be allowed to continue. The public deserves better. Elsewhere in Europe, waste companies compete for the whole market rather than individual household business. It is a much more sensible approach that produces a waste management system in which resources are efficiently allocated to collecting waste, without multiple lorries clogging up cities. It also delivers lower costs. Ultimately, taking the bin service back into public ownership will require the Government to introduce legislation to allow Dublin City Council to take back the service. Across Europe, the momentum is behind taking local services back under the control of local authorities.

Following the briefing in the audiovisual room last year, a cross-party committee was established. I commend its work. If elected, Sinn Féin will deliver the change that is much needed. I note that we are the only party to include measures, in our alternative manifesto, for the remunicipalisation of waste management. This will be of benefit to householders struggling with the cost-of-living crisis. It will help to tackle climate change and end the scourge of littering and illegal dumping. As Senator Hoey said, dumping is not the same problem in other European cities as it is here. What is missing is a comprehensive approach to waste management. If we are serious about tackling illegal dumping, bringing waste management back in-house is an important step. I thank the Labour Party for bringing forward the motion. It has Sinn Féin's full support.

I thank the Labour Party for introducing this motion. I support what Senator Boyhan said. I believe in competition. It works better than the municipalised system used to work. Nobody has talked about the economics of what is proposed in the motion. Nobody has said it will be cheaper for householders if the system is municipalised. Nobody has put forward any quantification of the economic implications for householders of getting rid of competition and municipalising the system.

I note that the motion calls for a waiver scheme for low-income householders and people with medical conditions.

However, implicit in that surely is the suggestion that charges are going to continue. The question that arises is about what are those charges going to be. The promoters of this motion are saying that there are major profits being made, which are being taken out of waste management and could be reinvested in waste management. That suggests that it is proposed that the investment in waste management in future should be financed out of waste collection charges. Again, the question that arises in that context is about who is going to charge them, who is going to fix the charges and how that is going to be done.

The second thing I want to say is that I do not accept the proposition that illegal dumping is caused by competition or charging for waste collection because if waste collection is not to be free, the incentive to engage in illegal dumping is going to exist. If we are not going to charge separately for bin and waste collections from houses, the question that arises is about whether this is going to be added to local taxation in some way and levied per household regardless of how much waste is produced or how often a bin is lifted. These are the kinds of questions that need to be addressed.

I have some sympathy for people who find themselves faced with the proposition of what to do with a broken lawnmower or garden bench or an old bicycle or something like that. What is to happen with it? Are people to drive to a municipal centre and pay money to get their rusty old bike recycled or do they just leave it at home? It does seem to me that there was a time in Dublin when area collections for major items of that kind were carried out by Dublin City Council. It should be a service that is made available. I do not care whether the council does it or private operators do it, but there is undoubtedly a case for one-off services of this kind to be available in a district on a specific day - perhaps one day per month - when people can bring out things and have them put into trucks to be taken away. Given that we are all into emissions now, this would be better than having drive their car up to Bohernabreena or wherever else they are supposed to go to pay to put the bicycle on a pile. They do not know what is going to happen with it up there. Is it going to be recycled for scrap metal? Nobody knows. That is the kind of thing that happens.

The second thing I want to say is about street cleaning. The suggestion has been made that €100 million is spent on clearing up illegal waste. How much of that figure relates to street cleaning and how much of it relates to actual clearing up of illegally dumped waste in significant amounts in the city? I agree that this particular phenomenon is caused by people who want to avoid paying bin charges. In that context, if we are going to continue to charge for a municipalised service, how does the incentive to avoid those charges disappear? How is Dublin City Council or Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown County Council going to prevent illegal dumping from happening simply because they are also responsible for the collection of waste? It does not all add up.

I fully appreciate that people are concerned. I do not really think the fact there are different companies collecting on my road in Ranelagh at different times is a huge environmental problem. It is a bit of a nuisance sometimes. On the other hand, I do not know that if one lorry had to do the whole road on one particular day, there would not be a massive traffic jam on the road as every single house would have to be done by the same team operating the same truck. There is no perfect solution to all of this. I will finish on that point.

I do not agree with remunicipalisation. I do not think it is a good idea. I think it is an ideological idea. I am glad to hear from Senator Warfield that he claims credit for this great ideological push on Dublin City Council to do it. I am glad he has not succeeded yet and I hope he and his colleagues do not succeed in bringing it about.

I thank Senators for bringing forward this interesting motion. I will start by talking about the different options here, three of which have been discussed. The first is the situation we have at the moment, which is competition in the market. Anybody with a waste collection permit can go out and collect waste door-to-door if they wish, wherever they wish. Second, it is competition for the market that people seek to obtain an exclusive tender to collect waste in a particular area, which would presumably be organised by the local authority. Finally, there is remunicipalisation, which is effectively nationalisation of a service that was previously privatised, although Senator McDowell made the case that the mention of waivers suggests that charges would still be there, so we are not talking about an unlimited free service paid out of general taxation.

Senator Sherlock referred to a number of legal problems and challenges that are here but also provided a number of suggestions for solutions. I thank her very much. I will look at those and consider them. I am not going to try to refute everybody's points or give glib answers because a lot of them are actually worth thinking about.

Deputy Alan Kelly was Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government between 2014 and 2016 and I believe he really wanted to make progress on this. Although he was an effective Minister who achieved many things in office, this was not one of them. It was not for the want of trying or from a lack of ability.

Senator Wall referred to the difficulty in getting the CCTV for dumping working in practice. I will refer to this a bit later, but the Local Government Management Agency, LGMA, has devised a scheme with the data protection people and there are a number of steps to jump through. I am doing a survey at the moment with local authorities to see how they are getting on with their CCTV. They have to strike a balance. There is a balance of rights between the right to live in a society where people are not under constant surveillance and the right to live in a free environment. Those things have to be balanced and there is a legal requirement to balance them.

Senator Kyne asked about the brown bins and when they will come in. They came in on 1 January. Every waste collector is meant to offer a brown bin service to everybody in the country since 1 January. If that is not happening in practice, people might let me know. Senator Kyne also referred to the problem of multiple trucks driving up the same street, which Senator McDowell considered might not be such a problem. A number of Senators raised this, however. From my point of view, it does seem like a waste of energy and a waste of resources to have multiple trucks driving up a street, which would then at least point towards competition for the market being a better solution.

Senator Boyhan made a case for competition, as did Senator McDowell. He also made the case for incineration and asked why we need to bother to segregate our waste at all if we have this fine incinerator that can burn it all and turn it into electricity and hot water to heat homes in the area. At the moment, we have approximately 41% of our municipal waste being incinerated, approximately 16% being landfilled, approximately 26% being recycled and 15% being composted or anaerobically digested There is a mix of things there. Generally, there are EU targets on recycling. It is considered to be a better thing to do than incineration, which is not the worst because we get something back from it. However, we do have to meet EU targets on recycling. In other words, our EU policy has been set that it is higher up the waste hierarchy to recycle things and we are meeting those targets.

Senator Hoey pointed out the particular problems in Dublin's inner city, particularly to do with food waste collection. She mentioned that many people do not have driveways and areas out the back in which to store things. In many cases, they have to bring wheelie bins through their homes. There can be problems with bags being on the ground and so on. I am working with Dublin City Council on such issues in the north-east inner city, where there are particular problems of extremely bad litter blight on the streets. We have a number of pilot projects that have been running for a while. We are hoping to collect some data to show that some of the worst streets in the city have improved recently.

Senator Maria Byrne expressed her support for people on low incomes who are unable to afford the cost of having waste collected and so on, which I will refer to later. She pointed out that litter on farms can be eaten by animals and that we need incentives to recycle.

We have many incentives to recycle. We have a complex scheme to encourage people to recycle. The deposit-return scheme would be one element of that, as is the whole Repak system and system of paying people. There are subsidies to people who collect waste and there are taxes on people who produce packaging and so on, which are all balanced to try to encourage recycling. A waste collection permit holder is legally required to charge more for the black bin waste than for the recycling waste, but that can be adjusted.

Senator Warfield made a case for re-municipalisation. I do not think it is a silver bullet. I am old enough to remember what the bin collection system was like when it was run by local authorities. It was more expensive and they did not handle recycling waste at the time. People moved by choice to private collectors because they were cheaper. Local authorities had difficulty and were delighted to exit the market for collecting waste at the time. Anybody who works in a local authority will say they would hate to go back there. That said, I would not rule it out.

Senator McDowell asked about the collection of heavy items, for example, broken lawnmowers and bicycles. Many local authorities provide exceptional collection schemes. The State subsidises them through the anti-dumping initiatives. It provides for things like mattress amnesties and other types of waste collection. It is a good point that not everybody has a car in which they can load a broken item to bring to a centre. This is particularly true in Dublin city centre where there is a very low rate of car ownership.

I am happy to update the House in respect of the significant progress made in recent years in how waste is managed while also highlighting the supports, in terms of both resources and legislative powers, given to local authorities to deal with littering and illegal dumping.

Under Part II of the Waste Management Act 1996, local authorities are statutorily responsible for waste management planning, including infrastructure provision. The Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications is precluded under section 60(3) of the Act, from the exercise of any power or control, in specific circumstances over the statutory functions of a local authority. As such, decisions on the provision of additional public infrastructure such as civic amenity sites and public bins are decisions for each local authority within its functional area.

The obligations on local authorities in respect of collecting household waste are set out in section 33 of the Waste Management Act 1996, as amended. In summary, it provides that each local authority shall collect, or arrange for the collection of, household waste within its functional area. The obligation to collect or arrange for the collection of household waste does not apply if: an adequate waste collection service is available in the local authority's functional area; the estimated costs of the collection of the waste would, in the opinion of the local authority, be unreasonably high; or the local authority is satisfied that adequate arrangements for the disposal of the waste concerned can reasonably be made by the holder of the waste.

It is open to any local authority to re-enter the waste collection market as a direct service provider if it so chooses, either alongside existing permitted service providers or subject to making arrangements to replace those providers. Altering the structure of the household waste collection market was the subject of a public consultation exercise in 2011. A comprehensive regulatory impact analysis from 2012 also considered options regarding the organisation of the household waste collection market. The RIA recognised that there were some advantages to the franchise-bidding approach, also known as competition for the market, which scored marginally higher than strengthening the regulatory regime and keeping the existing side-by-side competitive market structure - the competition in the market.

However, given the critical nature of the waste collection service, the risks associated with moving to franchise bidding were judged to deem this option ultimately less desirable. Noting that there was a possibility that a switch from side-by-side competition to franchise bidding could incur costs that made household waste collection less efficient, the RIA ultimately made the recommendation to strengthen the regulation of the market, especially in light of the risks associated with competition for the market. My view is that this is doable. Moving to competition for the market is something I can execute if I am convinced it is the right thing to do.

The continuing focus for my Department for the waste sector is to encourage greater waste minimisation, improve waste segregation and increase our recycling rates. A number of measures are already in place and the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act provides for a number of further measures from the waste action plan for a circular economy. Incentivised waste-collection charging in the commercial sector was introduced on 1 July 2023. A recovery levy has been applied on municipal waste recovery operations at municipal landfills, waste to energy plants, co-incineration plants and on the export of waste since 1 September 2023. This is the first time we have had a tax on incineration. There has been an expansion of household biowaste collection services since the first day of this year. I introduced the deposit-return scheme for plastic bottles and aluminium and steel cans on 1 February 2024. These measures will assist in encouraging greater waste minimisation and improved source segregation of waste by households and commercial premises across the State, and will contribute to achieving our challenging EU targets for municipal waste.

It is also worth highlighting the significant progress made over the last 20 years. In the early 2000s about 90% of our waste was going to landfills, of which there were 76 operating legally but several hundred were operating illegally. At that time, we had a recycling rate below 5%. Only 70,000 households had access to a kerbside collection service.

The current structure of the waste-collection market in Ireland, where private industry collects and manages the treatment of virtually all waste in Ireland under the regulatory supervision of the local authority sector and the EPA, has led us to a very different position. Now we have just three active municipal waste landfills accounting for about 10% of our waste going for disposal. Some 1.3 million households now have access to kerbside collection with recently introduced legislation requiring that all of these households are provided with a three-bin collection service. Our recovery rate is almost 80% and our recycling rate was 41% in 2021, the most recent year for which information is currently available. We are talking much less about what to do with what ends up in our bins and more about how we retain the inherent resource value of materials, which is the circular economy.

While the majority of waste collection and waste treatment in Ireland is conducted by private industry, both the local authority sector and the EPA continue to play an important role in overseeing the market to ensure it continues to operate in accordance with the various regulatory and licensing requirements. The recently published national waste management plan for a circular economy, which replaced the previous regional nature of such plans, is significant in this regard as it highlights the continued collaborative efforts required from all regulatory stakeholders to ensure the market continues to deliver the ambitions set out in both the waste action plan for a circular economy and the national waste management plan for a circular economy. These stakeholders include my Department, the EPA, the National Waste Collection Permit Office, the three regional waste management planning offices, the three waste enforcement regional authorities, WERLAs, and the National Transfrontier Shipment Office.

I will now move on to the call for the Government to stop Bord na Móna from selling its waste management business. I can confirm that the Government has received no formal notification from Bord na Móna on its intentions regarding its waste management business. Bord na Mona, is a commercial State body under the aegis of the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications. All State bodies are required to comply with the code of practice for the governance of State bodies of 2016, which aims to ensure commercial and non-commercial State bodies meet the highest standards of corporate governance. With regard to the disposal of assets, section 8.22 of the code states “The Chairperson of the Board should seek the approval of the relevant Minister and the Minister for Public Expenditure and Reform in advance of any material acquisition or disposal of land, buildings or other material assets proposed by a State body.”

As previously noted, under section 60(3) of the Waste Management Act 1996, the Minister for the Environment, Climate and Communications is precluded from exercising any power or control in the performance by a local authority, in particular circumstances, of a statutory function vested in it. Under the legislation, individual local authorities are responsible for dealing with cases involving the illegal disposal of waste in their functional areas. It is matter for them to take the appropriate enforcement and clean-up actions. However, while the primary responsibility for management and enforcement responses to illegal waste activity lies with local authorities, my Department continues to provide extensive policy, financial and legislative support. For example, my Department provided €750,000 under the anti-litter and anti-graffiti awareness grant scheme for 2023. Under this scheme, local authorities are responsible for selecting suitable projects and locations for funding and grant allocations.

Funding is also provided annually in support of a number of important anti-litter initiatives such as the national spring clean, the PURE project and Irish business against litter. In addition, my Department provides significant support to local authorities in their efforts to tackle illegal dumping. Almost €18 million, including €2.8 million in 2023, has been provided to the sector under the anti-dumping initiative since it was first introduced in 2017 to encourage a collaborative approach between local authorities, community groups and other State agencies to tackling the problem. A further €3 million has been made available under the scheme for 2024.

My Department also continues to invest heavily in the local authority waste enforcement network through the local authority waste enforcement measures grant scheme, with the intention of maintaining a visible presence of waste enforcement personnel on the ground across the State. From 2003 to the end of 2023, some €145 million has been provided to local authorities by my Department under this scheme and this funding has supported the ongoing recruitment and retention of a network of waste enforcement staff across the country.

Effective enforcement of waste legislation is a crucial component of our efforts to ensure our streets are clean and that all households and commercial premises take responsibility for ensuring their waste is managed in an appropriate manner. In this regard, my Department continues to work towards ensuring that the regulatory system in place is fit for purpose and that the enforcement structures underpinning the system are coherent, capable and credible. This system must ensure that all breaches of waste legislation can be identified, rigorously investigated and successfully prosecuted.

In recent years, we have seen huge policy shifts and legislative changes at both national and European levels. At European Union level, we have seen the ongoing development of the waste framework directive and the adoption of the single-use plastics directive. We have also seen the increasing importance of extended producer responsibility initiatives in dealing with challenging waste streams. At a national level, we have the waste action plan for a circular economy, which sets out a challenging and ambitious programme of works for the local authority sector over the next seven years. Work is continuing on developing the next whole-of-government circular economy strategy, which is due to be published later this year.

In the past year alone, we have seen the introduction of incentivised waste collection in the commercial sector, the nationwide roll-out of brown bins, the introduction of the deposit return scheme and the introduction of a new waste recovery levy. All of these measures require significant local authority enforcement activity to ensure their success.

I thank the Minister of State for his thoughtful contribution. I also thank Senators Kyne, Boyhan, Maria Byrne, McDowell and Warfield, and also my Labour Party colleagues Senators Hoey and Wall.

I believe I heard the Minister of State say he was very open to considering a system of competition for the market. That is a crucial point in our motion. We have always been very clear that in order to get to a place where we see the full remunicipalisation of waste services, the starting point has to involve local authorities having single tenders for waste collection across their areas.

I want to pick up on a point Senator McDowell made, namely that economics was missing in this debate. I assure him the economics of waste management is at the very heart of the motion. If he reads the motion, he might actually see we are trying to address the market failure entailing the lack of 100% collection coverage across the country. We are trying to address the environmental failure owing to the duplication of services in certain urban areas, where there is environmental waste in the form of emissions because of multiple trucks following each other around. There is a lack of incentivisation to invest in waste management systems because of the current lopsided system whereby waste operators collect bins for a charge while local authorities are expected to put on the free services and also clean up the mess left behind from illegal dumping. Of course, there is the risk of additional market failure when there is a natural monopoly, with a large operator effectively hiking up prices as it sees fit, and of course overwhelming reliance on a private operator for what should be a public service.

The key point we have heard in most of the contributions today concerned unhappiness and discontent with the status quo. There have to be changes, be they regulatory or of a different kind. There is work to be done with regard to the powers the National Waste Collection Permit Office, NWCPO, is given to be a truly effective national regulator for waste. It is given responsibility with regard to data collection and some oversight functions, but we have seen no evidence or information regarding the teeth it has to ensure waste collection companies are doing the job they are supposed to do.

Senator Maria Byrne raised the issue of waivers in Limerick. Limerick has the only local authority where we see this in operation. Ultimately, we cannot divorce the reasons for illegal dumping from the issues of culture, overcrowded accommodation, a lack of responsibility on the part of landlords, and, of course, pricing, particularly for those who have very little within their households. We believe that to address some of the issues related to illegal dumping, we must not consider them in isolation and just say people illegally dump for the sake of it. Some people dump illegally because they cannot afford it or because they are simply in overcrowded accommodation.

All the conversations about CCTV and strengthening the types of bags used in Dublin – Senator Boyhan talked the 900 streets that currently have derogations – are tipping around the edges. These matters are all very important and have to be part of the conversation; however, ultimately if we do not see reform of how waste management is organised, we will not see any dramatic improvement in respect of illegal dumping, fly-tipping or the attitude towards waste collection. We cannot hope to be a truly modern European city if we still rely on having bins sitting outside and do not have the underground systems we see in so many other European cities.

I thank the Minister of State for his contribution today and hope he will work with us. We want to hear more from him regarding what he has said about further developing initiatives so we can move to a system of competition for the market. There is a huge appetite. Those of us who knock on doors and talk to councillors across the country will know that waste is a massive issue and that there is a huge appetite for change. We need to see that change.