There will be joyous dancing in the streets over the decision by the Minister for the Environment, Noel Dempsey, to make supermarkets charge their customers 15p per plastic bag. A Plastic Bag Tax is clearly a good thing, just as a dog licence is a good thing, and a dog-muzzling law is a good thing, and unless the Minister is doing something almost unheard of in this country, namely introducing measures to ensure that a freshly introduced law is actually implemented, the PBT will join all those many statutes that have been passed through Dail Eireann solely to be a statement of aspirational piety.
The most spectacular of these in its knee-jerk inanity was the dog-muzzling laws of 10 years ago, which was simply a bad copy of an already bad British law. It called on dog owners to muzzle certain species of dogs in public places, many of the types being chosen because they had the name "bull" in their names. Even the bulldog had to be muzzled, even though it has no muzzle to be muzzled. It is the canine equivalent of demanding that nuns be given vasectomies before being allowed out in public.
Meaningless
Still, we should feel grateful that Dail Eireann didn't introduce laws calling for the muzzling of Papal Bulls, or bullhorns, or bullocks, or bullfrogs or even bulldykes. Perhaps one of the sharper civil servants recognised that passing a law requiring butch lesbians to wear leather masks in public places might prove problematical. The fact that the rest of the law was meaningless, unenforceable gibberish, which neither legally defined the species to be muzzled - what is the legal difference between a German Shepherd (to be muzzled) and a Belgian Shepherd (not)? - nor proposed measures to enforce it, was irrelevant. More importantly, yet another law had entered that huge body of unenforced Irish laws that exist solely as statements of national piety.
Now nice Noel Dempsey is proposing that supermarkets charge 15p a plastic shopping bag, with the proceeds to go to an Environmental Fund. Excellent. How is this scheme to be policed? Who is to keep account of the numbers of bags being produced and sold? What is to stop supermarkets pocketing the proceeds? What is to prevent the supermarkets giving away a free plastic bag with, say, every two pounds of groceries bought? Is the Minister actually thinking of criminalising the free distribution of bags by supermarkets?
And what about butchers, and greengrocers, and hardware, and clothing shops, all of which sell their produce in plastic bags? Will we have retailers' apartheid, so that there is a 15p tax on a plastic bag if you buy groceries from Dunnes, but not if you buy shirts from a different checkout 15 feet away? How is that enforceable, both practically, and as a matter of natural justice? And how long would the Supreme Court take to rule that the discrimination against one kind of retailer in such matters is unconstitutional, ultra vires and therefore illegal?
Illegal imports
In the highly improbable event of the law surviving the rigorous attentions of the Supreme Court, how is this piece of legislative witlessness to be enforced? Is there to be An Garda Mala Plaisteach at each supermarket checkout, ensuring that each customer hands over 15p for every bag? Will there be controls, such as excise stamps, on the offending items to prevent illegal imports? Will An Garda Mala Plaisteach have roadblocks at the Border to prevent the patriots of South Armagh, who having so brilliantly introduced foot-and-mouth into both parts of Ireland, are next using their manifold talents to smuggle in contraband bags? Will there be Bag Patrols, with Bag Rangers abseiling out of helicopters when illegal bags are spotted racing through the countryside at midnight?
And what does the Minister for Finance think about this proposal and its possible consequences for the cost of living? To have any impact, and to be legally viable, it would have to be enforced right across the retail sector, in Moore Street and Superquinn alike. Moreover, the term "plastic bag" would have to be successfully defined in law in the way that the various dog species weren't. All these improbables having been converted into meaningful legal instruments, to be enforced by the ubiquitous and incorruptible An Garda Mala Plaisteach, what would the Eurobank say if our inflation went up by a point or two in the war against the plastic bag?
Rod licence row
My, so much thought must have gone into these proposals. Was it of the order that went into the framing of our splendid dog-muzzling laws? Or was it of the kind which meant that learner drivers who, having conclusively proven that they couldn't drive, having thrice failed the test, would be given a full driving licence? Or was it like the marvellous rod licence law of a decade ago, which bore every sign of having been framed by civil servants who, combined, had the IQ of a rather backward brown trout?
Laws make sense when they reflect the consensus and conduct of those they govern; so start with the children. Yet there has been no serious programme by the nation's schools to make their pupils litter-conscious, as there has been across mainland Europe. Some French supermarkets make you pay for heavy duty plastic bags, but freely give away light bags, yet you won't find litter fluttering on the hedgerows of France like pennants on a royal halyard. People, not plentiful plastic, cause litter. Pious aspirational laws will not change that inconvenient truth.