Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)
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Question 316: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government if the accumulative surplus of the environment fund, deriving from the landfill levy and plastic bag levy, can be used to fund the removal of illegally dumped waste from a landfill when the operators have effectively abandoned the landfill. [42764/10]

Emmet Stagg (Kildare North, Labour)
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Question 317: To ask the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government if the accumulative surplus of the environment fund, deriving from the landfill levy and plastic bag levy, can be used to fund the provision of landfill gas collection infrastructure on landfills when the operators have effectively abandoned the landfill. [42765/10]

John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 316 and 317 together.

Revenues from the levies on plastic shopping bags and the landfill of waste are paid into a 'ring-fenced' Environment Fund, established under the Waste Management (Amendment) Act 2001, and can be used for activities that are of benefit to the environment. The purposes for which the Fund may be used are set out in section 74(9) of the Waste Management Act 1996 (as inserted by section 12 of the Waste Management (Amendment) Act 2001) and the Waste Management (Environment Fund)(Prescribed Payments) Regulations 2003.

It is essential that every effort is made to ensure that those responsible for environmental damage fully meet the costs involved and any question of the State funding any remedial works involved, whether from the Environment Fund or any other source, would fall to be considered in that context.