Ireland has missed the deadline for all EU member states to adopt an EU directive setting higher recycling and recovery targets for packaging waste into their national legislation.
Only Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom adopted the directive by last Thursday's deadline.
The directive applies to packaging made from paper, glass, metals, plastics and wood and updates, and it strengthens an earlier directive from 1994. It aims to further reduce the negative environmental impacts created by the landfilling and incineration of packaging waste.
A new European report states that Ireland came second last in the recycling league table. Ireland has an overall recycling figure of 35 per cent, compared to Germany which has topped the poll managing to recycle 74 per cent of its waste.
Although Ireland has achieved the 2005 target of 25 per cent of recycling, it compares poorly to other EU member states.
Ireland was ranked last on recycling paper, second last on recycling metals, 11th out of 15 for glass recycling and ninth out of 15 for recycling plastics.
Green Party Environment spokesman Ciarán Cuffe TD said the Government has already missed deadlines set by Europe for implementing Noise and Environmental Impact Assessment Directives. He accused Minister for the Environment Dick Roche of "failing to meet deadlines set by Europe for handling our waste.
"[The] Forfás 2004 Annual Competitiveness Report shows that high waste charges are damaging Irish competitiveness. Encouraging waste reduction, re-use and recycling is crucial, and the State has a central role to play in this area," Mr Cuffe said.
Labour Party environment spokesman Eamon Gilmore called on Mr Roche to set a clear timetable for the implementation of all outstanding EU environmental directives.
"Successive EU surveys have found that Ireland has one of the poorest records when it comes to respecting EU environmental laws."
"We market ourselves as a 'clean' country both in regard to tourism and food production and it does nothing for our reputation that Ireland is so regularly in the EU dock for failures in this regard," he added
Fine Gael environment spokesman, Fergus O'Dowd called the recycling figures "a relegation-style performance from the Government" and an "indictment of this Government's attitude to the environment and packaging waste."
He stated that the new legislation that the Government failed to introduce would have "reduced our dependency on landfill and brought us closer toward a more responsible policy on managing packaged waste."