The aim of taxing them would be to drive behavioural change by consumers, who would be incentivised to bring their own reusable cup, or sit in to have a tea or coffee.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The government has abandoned the previous government\u2019s 2022 pledge to directly charge consumers a so-called latte levy at the till as an incentive to switch to reusable cups. Since last year, civil servants have been working on a new plan for Revenue to collect the tax directly from producers or importers of disposable cups.<\/p>\n
The companies lobbying against the measure –\u00a0who have come together as the Irish Paper Packaging Circularity Alliance (IPPCA) \u2013 have claimed that levying 20c on the cup producers would add 29c to the price of a cup of coffee, which would \u201cultimately be passed on to consumers\u201d.<\/p>\n
This would eat into the savings made by hospitality businesses through the VAT cut that kicked in last month<\/a>, the companies said in a letter in February to Alan Dillon, the junior minister at the Department of Enterprise who is responsible for the issue.<\/p>\n The companies did not explain where the 29c figure came from in their letter, which was released under Freedom of Information.<\/p>\n In a submission to the Department of the Environment in April, after meeting with officials, the coalition of companies opposed to the latte levy argued the proposed upstream tax would fail to incentivise behavioural change by consumers. However, they also opposed the original ideal of a levy directly on consumers.<\/p>\n The IPPCA companies claimed that\u00a0\u201dindependent research\u201d in 2023 had indicated that the introduction of any levy would cause caf\u00e9s\u2019 revenue to decline by 19-23%. This research was commissioned by the companies themselves.<\/p>\n The IPPCA companies told officials in April that the collapse of a high-profile reusable cup scheme in Killarney had showed \u201cthe ineffectiveness of such schemes, even when customer incentives exist\u201d. Fifty local businesses in Killarney had\u00a0come together in 2023 and agreed not to offer takeaway cups and instead offer reusable ones for a \u20ac2 deposit.<\/p>\n Contrary to the IPPCA\u2019s suggestion,\u00a0local businesses withdrew last year from the Killarney scheme<\/a>\u00a0as a result of the government\u2019s u-turn on the 20c latte levy.<\/p>\n The IPPCA is advocating for a move to paper cup collection and recycling.<\/p>\n It has organised a pilot cup collection scheme in leafy Ranelagh in south Dublin in collaboration with Dublin City Council, and wants the government to roll this out nationwide in lieu of introducing a levy.<\/p>\n Consumers can dispose of paper coffee cups at special \u201ccup collection units\u201d in four businesses in Ranelagh, Supervalu, Spar, Butlers and Urban Health caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n The Cup Collective\n<\/p>\n The IPPCA has repeatedly requested meetings with the minister to discuss the latte levy. Internal correspondence shows that Department of Environment officials advised the minister in January not to meet with the group until the regulatory impact assessment on the new latte levy plan was finalised.\n<\/p>\n Pressure from Europe<\/p>\n The government is under pressure from Brussels to do more to tackle single-use plastics, with the European Commission initiating infringement proceedings against the State in April<\/a>.<\/p>\n Irish Businesses Against Litter, which carries out regular litter surveys nationwide, has condemned the government\u2019s prevarication on the latte levy and warned that without state intervention coffee cups will remain an \u201centirely unnecessary\u201d blight on the Irish landscape.<\/p>\n Surveys conducted by the Environmental Protection Agency between 2019 and 2021 indicated strong support<\/a> for policies to reduce consumption of single use plastic, with 64% supporting levies at point of sale.<\/p>\n The Department of Environment said this weekend that it is still considering the \u201cnext policy steps\u201d to tackle Ireland\u2019s throwaway cup habit, and indicated this could take a number of months.<\/p>\n![\"PastedImage-63145\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/1786222343_450_.png\")
\n Cup collection unit as part of the Ranelagh cup recycling scheme. The Cup Collective<\/p>\n