Jim Shannon

None of us is against the idea of recycling and reusing, and it is important that we have a plan of action to do that. However, in the light of the questions I have asked about what is happening back home, my concern is that we do not know exactly what Northern Ireland’s input into the process will be. It seems that there is none. The idea of a deposit return scheme is not new. When I was a child, which was not yesterday, the Maine man brought fizzy drinks to our door. My parents were extremely displeased if we children smashed the bottles, in which case the money would not come back for their recycling—we understood that we would be in trouble. That scheme worked, and it is the kind of scheme we would like to see. We need to reuse bottles, and we can do that only with co-operation and buy-in from the general public. My local church and others have raised funds to run their Campaigner clans and missionary projects by asking their congregations and kids to bring in drinks cans. They industriously hoover the roads to collect the cans, which they crush and bring to the Bryson recycling scheme in Belfast for cash. The money raised is sent to the missionaries in Swaziland and is used for Campaigner clan equipment. Though the scheme ran for a set period, the church has continued to do it. There are many such schemes in Northern Ireland. The Minister knows that I am fond of her, and I am not here to cast any aspersions or cause any hassle, but we understand that 12 billion plastic bottles and 14 billion drinks cans are sold in the United Kingdom each year. We need to consider something different. I thank the civil servants. I am not giving them a hard time, but I want to know the answers to my questions. We need to understand the differences between the Republic of Ireland scheme and the one being proposed here. To use a biblical term, how can oil and water mix, and the water be good enough to drink and the oil good enough to put in a car? My point is that if there are two completely different schemes, with different goals, in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland, we need to ensure that the matter is looked at in a sensible way. Our colleagues who are Members of the Legislative Assembly do not know about the scheme either, so we have a very vague system before us. I know that we are all committed to trying to do something better and different. We take our bottles to the bottle bank every week, and the council collects them; and we recycle our plastics and paper through the blue bin system, and we wholeheartedly support that; but there is something very wrong about the Minister bringing forward a scheme that the MLAs in Northern Ireland do not know anything about. I understand that the Minister said that the Northern Ireland Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs has given DEFRA authority to carry out the scheme, but which Member of the Legislative Assembly gave the go-ahead? Those are my questions. We understand the reasons for the scheme in principle, but it is vague and generalised, and there has not been proper input from the Northern Ireland Assembly.