The news that Panda is hiking up its bin charges will be no surprise to customers who have had to pay hefty bin charges in this country since 2003, when the move to bring in bin charges was imposed. That was 20 years ago. Along with 27 activists, I went to prison over protests to stop bin charges. We did this not because we are miserable and do not want to pay our way in society, but because we predicted at the time, quite rightly, that it would be a disaster, that it would lead to the privatisation of waste collection services up and down the country, and that this privatisation would in turn be a disaster for workers, for the environment and for the communities which these services are supposed to serve.

The news that Panda will charge for organic waste is a contradiction of what we were told at the time by the State and the Department of the environment, and what we are being told now, which was that encouraging people to recycle was the reason bin charges were brought in. In that process of recycling, they will now be charged for the organic waste, much of which for decades was dumped at the back of where I live on Kylemore Avenue in a facility that was owned by Thorntons. In the last year or so, they have moved the organic waste out of Ballyfermot under pressure from the local community and on foot of the constant campaigning to the Environmental Protection Agency that we had to do. Now that it has been moved out of there, we no longer have the odours, the inconvenience and the toxic air that spread through Ballyfermot for many decades.

All that aside, we now have a company that was bought for €1.4 billion from Mr. Eamon Waters of Beauparc Utilities by an Australian infrastructure fund. An Australian infrastructure fund is raising bin charges to ordinary consumers by approximately €100 a year for 26 lifts. At the same time, what we are witnessing as a result of the privatisation of the service is large dirty diesel-run trucks running up and down estates not once a week but every day of the week. Those who live in working-class estates will know that this is what has resulted from competition. People are going to Thorntons, to Panda or to City Bin. There is a plethora of waste management companies, and most of them are registered offshore so that their profits are not up for scrutiny. We have a measure of a lot of their profits. By God, their profits are rising astronomically. I will read out some of them later on. Even in this cost-of-living crisis, they are gaining and people are losing out.

Is it not time for the State to call for the renationalisation and remunicipalisation of waste management services throughout the country? It has been a disaster for the environment, for workers and for ordinary people who have to pay the charges. It is time to reverse that and do the right thing for all the reasons I have mentioned.

Apart from ideology or whatever, we need to analyse what has happened in terms of waste in this country over the last 20 years. The Deputy has said that she opposed what transpired in 2003. I was reading recently Mark Henry's book In Fact: An Optimist's Guide to Ireland at 100. We have made extraordinary progress in terms of recycling, in terms of reducing our dependency on landfill and in terms of how we manage waste.

Irrespective of whether it is private, public or whatever, the story around waste in Ireland has been one of continuous progress over the past two decades. Of that there is no doubt. I know this because I led campaigns to close landfills. One landfill that I was anxious to close is now an amenity park, Tramore Valley Park in Cork city. It was a horrible dump at one stage. In fact, there were proposals to produce another landfill to replace it. That alternative landfill never got developed because there was no need for it due to our household recycling efforts. That needs to be acknowledged in the first instance before we commit ourselves to wholesale renationalisation of the service.

I accept the point that at times, because of the competition that the Deputy has spoken about, you can have situations in housing estates where there is a proliferation of different companies going through such estates. I acknowledge that point. There is always room, in terms of regulating markets, etc., to deal with that but the fundamental objective has to be to reduce and minimise waste and then ensure it is recycled, etc.

As the Deputy will be aware, in mid-2017, the then Government decided to phase out flat-rate fees for household waste collection. Collection companies are required to charge fees which incentivise households to minimise waste and to segregate their recyclable and organic waste from residual waste. In the interests of encouraging further waste prevention and greater recycling, flat-rate fees for kerbside household waste collection were phased out over that period.

The price monitoring group for household waste collection, which monitored the market up to the end of 2020, found that prices in the market were broadly stable. Data from the group showed that offerings in the market had coalesced around eight common price plans with the most common being a service charge with a weight allowance plus excess charges above that particular allowance. There is no requirement for a collector to charge fees on the organic bin but, of course, it is open to companies to decide how to structure their pricing plans.

We will keep the situation under review. From an overall Government perspective, we have done a lot to try to assist people in respect of the cost of living more generally and we monitor charges across the economy.

I thank the Tánaiste.

We have reduced quite a substantial number of charges across the economy, particularly public service charges in health and in other areas, such as education, over the past 12 months.

Part of the Tánaiste's statement has made my case for me. If people are incentivised to recycle, they separate their organic waste and their paper, plastic and bottles, they pay for their black-bin waste, and they do not pay for the recycling. Then they are incentivised. That incentive is now being taken from them by this increase announced by Panda followed by another increase announced by City Bin. Given the competitive nature of this market, which was designed to be competitive by a previous Fianna Fáil-led Government, no doubt this market will increase the prices for everybody to recycle and thereby remove the incentive. This is the craziness of companies which are making vast profits, most of which will now fund infrastructure in Australia. This is the biggest waste management company in the country.

Panda is now owned by an Australian infrastructure company and its profits will help Australia to build infrastructure. It does nothing for us here except put more hefty bin charges on people and disincentivise them from recycling. I agree with the Tánaiste about landfill. We are burning our waste out in Poolbeg. We have an incinerator that we did not have before and we are still exporting a huge volume of waste, much of it toxic waste.

I thank the Deputy. Her time is up.

If the privatisation of waste has not led to that, what has? We need to take it back into public ownership, control it, and stop it being the mode of profit for these greedy companies. Their profits are going through the roof.

I thank the Deputy. She is way over time.

Thorntons Recycling made €5.7 million in pre-tax profits last year. As I said earlier, most of the profits are offshore. Panda's profits have been enormous but its prices are going up. The Tánaiste has not answered that.

I would make a general point in response. Many Irish companies provide services all over the world. Deputy Boyd Barrett can nod all he likes but we do. Our economy depends-----

The profits from a public service go to build infrastructure in Australia. It is madness.

Irish companies provide services all over the world, such as wastewater treatment, high-technology solutions, and you name it. That is what Ireland does today. The Deputies should talk to Enterprise Ireland officials and a number of its client companies that export their services all over the world, including to Australia and Canada. That creates jobs in Ireland. The Deputies' model of the economy would damage our model, which produces full employment.

I do not know what the Tánaiste is talking about. That is not the argument here.

The Deputy raised the argument about a company being problematic because it is international.

It is just part of my argument. What is the Tánaiste going to do about this?

Deputy Smith, please.

The Government is disincentivising people by allowing this to happen.

It is a consistent thread which I am not going to take anymore; it needs to be challenged. This country has full employment. The enterprise model we have developed over the past 30 years has worked, broadly speaking.

That is because we send our money to Australian infrastructure companies. That is brilliant.

Deputy Smith has been against the enterprise model all the time. I am entitled to challenge her fundamental premise, which Deputy Boyd Barrett shares.

Of course he does.

The Deputy does not have a monopoly on wisdom of how economies get managed. Nobody does, but I am sure of one thing.

The Tánaiste's time is up.

We have a small, open economy in this country and if we are going to take a protectionist view that no foreign company can provide any service in this country, that would destroy the Irish economic model, because we are basically saying that no other country in the world should tolerate Irish companies providing good and high-quality services elsewhere.

Is it wise to disincentivise people?

Please, Deputy Smith.

I did not say that at all.