The Green Party has accused the Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, of ducking the issue when it comes to managing the country's waste problem. A new report launched by the Environmental Protection Agency today shows that the amount of waste produced and sent to landfill remains persistently high, despite recent recycling successes.

Green Party councillor, Deirdre de Burca said: "Since the Government came into office in 1997 its record on tackling the waste crisis in Ireland has been abysmal. The Forfás Waste Management Benchmarking study in 2005 showed that we are now European leaders in waste generation, landfill and waste exporting.

"While I welcome today's figures on recycling, this is only one part of a large problem that the Government is failing to tackle. As the Green Party has continually pointed out, we need to combine our recycling efforts with waste reduction measures such as deposit and refund schemes and increased levies on producers who continue to produce unnecessary packaging. Furthermore, we continue to export over three quarters of our recyclable waste.

"We now know that the current system governing producer responsibility for packaging waste has almost entirely failed to encourage producers and retailers in Ireland to reduce the amount of packaging which they burden households with.

"Minister Roche's claim that the Government has been 'phenomenally successful' on waste issues is simply laughable. The Minister must force producers and retailers to play a bigger role in waste reduction by introducing legislation that penalises them for producing excessive packaging waste. The Green Party wants to see a National Recycling Agency established to promote waste reduction and create jobs in Ireland in the recycling industry."