Seán Sherlock (Cork East, Labour) | Oireachtas source

If one goes into a bar or any good hostelry and looks behind the bar, alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages are not being sold out of a plastic container but a glass container. If that can be done in all the bars in Ireland, I do not see why we cannot move towards a glass-based approach for the beverages that are sold by what I call the multiples in this country, that is, by the supermarkets.

If we are imaginative and think laterally about how we want to proceed, we can achieve a lot. However, this goes back to the fact it is impossible at the moment to keep apace with the level of production of plastics. There is more being produced than is being recycled. We need to do something. There needs to be some positive disruption to that dynamic. We are a maritime nation and, as one, we may think the Atlantic Ocean, the Irish Sea, St. George's Channel and the Celtic Sea - however one might want to term those passages of water - are pristine. However, as someone who has an interest in sea-kayaking, I see on the water first hand the amount of plastic that ends up in our oceans and, ultimately, in our food chain. We do not want to go there from a public health point of view. For all sorts of environmental reasons, we need to be smart about this.

This type of co-operation across party political boundaries is important, especially on an issue that unites us all. I reiterate our congratulations to the Green Party on bringing forward these proposals.

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