Before I call Senator Garvey, I welcome the Minister of State at the Department of Housing, Local Government and Heritage, Deputy Malcolm Noonan, and his family to the Distinguished Visitors Gallery. I thank them for joining us today.

The Minister of State and his family are welcome. I wish to raise an issue around the circular economy. The term "circular economy" will become one of those new buzzwords like "climate emergency" and "sustainable" everything. I want it to be explained in a very clear way so we do not think that if we keep mentioning the word "sustainable" it will make a difference. The circular economy is where we look at the amount of waste we are producing, be it from clothes, cars, rubbish or food, and do something about it.

Recently, I had the great pleasure of going to Ballymun to visit one of the most inspiring places I have been to in an awfully long time, the Rediscovery Centre. This building was repurposed thanks to a great woman, Dr. Sarah Miller, and her staff. They turned an old district heating system into a place that has training and sees the repair of bikes, clothes, furniture and paint. It is an inspirational place. As we move towards the challenges we face around climate, and the biodiversity crisis we are in now, I urge every Member in the Government and the Opposition to go to this place and bring back their inspiration to their local authority. I have since engaged with my local authority in looking to set up something similar. Not only can we take what has been done at the Rediscovery Centre, which is completely inspiring, we could take it one step further, link in with the education and training boards and get certification for the people who are being trained up. They can then on go to create green jobs. That is where it is at, at this stage. It is not about buying another reusable water bottle or green product. That is still consumerism. We have to look past that and look at degrowth and the circular economy. These kinds of places could result in jobs, with access to business supports.

Irish households create 14 million tonnes of waste every year. In Ireland, we send 63,000 tonnes of textiles to landfill per year. Almost half of what we donate to charity shops and clothes banks enters the global textile trade, often with devastating consequences for the countries on which they are offloaded. Per head of population, Ireland is among the highest waste producers in Europe. We have to buy less stuff and we have to try to reuse and upcycle all we have. That is where we at, at this stage. Everything is coming from petrol, precious metals or precious ores in the ground that take a lot of carbon to produce. Ireland, per head of population, is among the highest waste producers in Europe. Every year, our waste would fill Croke Park to the top of the stands. It is estimated that almost 14 million tonnes of waste was generated in Ireland in 2018, across all sectors and households, corresponding to 2.9 tonnes per person.

Producing plastic products through recycling plastic reduces energy requirements by 66%. I cannot believe we are still talking about recycling, but it is about reducing, reusing and recycling. We have to take it seriously and we have to do more about it. As Government representatives, we have to take this seriously, look at what we can do and support things such as the Rediscovery Centre being replicated throughout Ireland.

I ask the House to request the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Climate and Communications, Deputy Ossian Smyth, who has done a lot of work on this, to come to the Chamber to better inform us of the plans for, and progress he has made on, the circular economy in Ireland.

I echo the recommendation that everyone visits the Rediscovery Centre. When I worked in Global Action Plan in Ballymun, I worked closely with Dr. Miller and the Rediscovery Centre. It is an incredible resource. I was going to say I was happy the Minister of State was in the Gallery because of what I was going to speak about today. I will not have the opportunity to speak during the citizens' assembly debate but I would like to raise a number of issues that should feature in the biodiversity citizens' assembly, one of which is the role the State is playing in actively destroying habitats and undermining our wildlife laws.

In the past week, we have had two separate reports outlining where the Office of Public Works, OPW, has breached animal welfare laws, one in Emo Court and the second in Barryscourt Castle, Cork, by disturbing bat roosts without the proper licence. Work in Barryscourt began in 2016 but a bat specialist was not called into the 600-year-old castle until 2020. I am more familiar with the case of Emo Court because I have been given the runaround by the OPW and the National Parks and Wildlife Service for the past number of months. It was only through a freedom of information request that I was able to expose the fact that despite an ecologist visiting Emo Court in 2019 and saying works could not go ahead because the mitigation could not ensure the safety of the bat roost, the OPW ploughed ahead. When I say, "ploughed ahead", it ploughed ahead. It was only when it was reported by people who rightly whistleblew on this that the National Parks and Wildlife Service went out to investigate the site in January 2020. The only evidence of bats they found was swept-up bat droppings and a dead bat. To make matters worse, it appears the National Parks and Wildlife Service, instead of doing its job, which would have been to file a criminal complaint regarding the works the OPW undertook without a licence, it appears licences were retrospectively granted and a prosecution has not been pursued. When we talk about a biodiversity crisis, if biodiversity is not safe within State bodies and they are going out and actively destroying it, and if a second body is facilitating one body in doing so, what hope do we have on private land?

It is also the case that the OPW has form in this area. It is not just these two individual cases. We only have to look at what it is doing to rivers throughout the country. I recommend that everybody looks at the Twitter account of environmental consultants ECOFACT, run by Dr. Will O'Connor, who constantly exposes the brutal works carried out by the OPW. It recently destroyed otter, kingfisher and lamprey habitats on the Nenagh River and yet the OPW gave itself a very good rating in its environmental audit of those works.

I will not be able to say this in the debate so I am calling for the citizens' assembly to address the role of the OPW because I would not trust it with a fly at the moment. The assembly must also look at who monitors the work the OPW is carrying out. When it comes to wildlife crime, nobody can be above the law.