by Paul O'Brien
Tuesday 25 July 2006
Spend morning working on a draft policy paper on the Environment with John Marsh our Principal Advisor in this area. As we discuss it we can't help but come to the conclusion that we are so far behind the rest of Europe in this area and Government policy is taking us completely down the wrong road. We are geared up to collect as much waste as possible because of Governments fixation with marketisation and competition when really we should be pursuing a strategy to minimise waste. This requires education and enforcement in order to reduce level of waste not building bigger and bigger disposal plants. Which leads us to the thorny question of variable charging and our view is firmly that this must be done on an equitable basis and not turn into a form of regressive taxation on families.
