THERE ARE “absolutely no plans” to increase the plastic bag levy to 70 cent, a spokesman for Minister for the Environment John Gormley said yesterday.
Under the Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill 2011, which was published this week, any future minister for the environment will have the flexibility to introduce a levy increase up to a ceiling of 70 cent by ministerial order, but a spokesman for Mr Gormley assured consumers no such price rise was envisioned.
“The legislation has to include a cap on how much the levy can be; we have to state the maximum but that does not mean it is going to increase to that maximum.”
He said 70 cent had been explicitly stated to provide the department with “breathing space” should the levy need to be increased in the future either to keep it in line with inflation or to ensure it continued to act as a deterrent on people using plastic bags.
“It has never been a revenue-generating levy and it will only increase if we see the number of plastic bags being used increase,” the spokesman said.
While the Department of the Environment has always insisted that the aim of the levy is not to generate revenue, it has generated more than €150 million for the exchequer since it was introduced in 2002. When it came into being the levy was 15 cent a plastic bag. This resulted in a dramatic reduction in usage from 328 bags by each person every year to 21 bags.
By June 2007, however, usage had increased to 33 bags a person and the levy was increased by seven cent to 22 cent in July of that year.
Consumption dropped again, to 26 bags a person, for the next six months but had risen steadily since.
