This article is from page 30 of the 2005-09-27 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 30 JPG
THERE will be no more used farm plastic collected by the Irish Farm Film Plastic Group (IFFPG) in Clare this year if funding isn’t made available to the organisation 1m- mediately according to the General Manager of the plastic scheme, Sean Campbell.
Mr Campbell was in Clare last week and met with representative of Clare IFA in an attempt to re- solve the situation. According to Mr Campbell the IFFPG has already exceeded it contractual obligation by 4,000 tonnes of plastic this year and if it continues to collect it will go out of business.
The problem, according to Mr Campbell, is plastic that is being sold to farmers illegally and no levy is being collected on that plastic.
“Roughly about 18,000 tonnes of plastic was bought in Ireland this year and out of that a levy was paid on only 15,000,” said Mr Campbell. “It is being imported illegally and we are taking a double hit, we are not receiving the levy on the plastic but we still have to dispose of it.”
The Chairman of the Clare IFA Seamus Murphy has described the current situation of plastic collection in Clare as ‘alarming’ and ‘unsatis- factory.’
“The collection has been unsatis- factory and it’s a big blow that it has stopped altogether,’ said Mr Mur- phy. “IFA members in the county have plastic still on their farms for up to three years and while paying the levy on the plastic, it is not ac-
ceptable that this plastic is not col- lected yet.”
The IFFPG has collected in ex- cess of 12,500 tonnes of plastic this year even though, according to Mr Campbell, they are only required to collect 8,500 by the Government. Collection stopped nationwide at the end of August leaving farmers in many counties left with uncollected jo E-NLB (en
Clare was one of the worst coun- ties hit with roughly have of the
counties plastic left uncollected. The worst hit counties are Wexford and Roscommon where little or no plastic has been collected and Gal- way where approximately two thirds of all plastic remains on the land. Mr Campbell told the Clare Peo- ple that they will be approaching the Departments of Agriculture and the Environment with a view to receiv- ing a grant to cover the cost of col- lecting the remaining plastic. Fail- ing that he said that they well have to
look at the possibility of increasing the levy or introducing some sort of direct payment from the farmers on top of the levy.
Seamus Murphy said that he will be raising the issue with Oireach- tas members in the county over the coming days and hopes that some solution can be found for this prob- lem so that the farm plastic collec- tion service will be up and running as soon as possible.