The 2026 levy exemption review passed its deadline in silence.
S.I. No. 441 of 2024 built its own review into the regulations: the exemptions from the €10-per-tonne waste recovery levy had to be reviewed, and that review concluded, by 1 September 2026. One of those exemptions covers non-greenfield soil and stone. That date has now passed, no outcome has been published, and the exemptions stand exactly as they were drafted.
Status · verified 9 September 2026
The deadline passed on 1 September 2026 with no outcome published. What we checked, and what we found: the Irish Statute Book’s 2026 index carries no instrument amending S.I. No. 441 of 2024; every issue of Iris Oifigiúil from 11 August to 8 September 2026 notifies none; the Department of Climate, Energy and the Environment’s 2026 consultation list contains none on this review; and no Dáil written answer from January to July 2026 addresses it. Those are the channels we can read. The department’s own site cannot be searched reliably, so treat this as four specific negatives rather than a guarantee that nothing was said anywhere.
Regulation 5(2) required a review to be concluded. It did not require the result to be published or acted on, and it set no deadline at all on changing the exemptions themselves. That power stays live.
What the statute required
The review was not discretionary and not a consultation someone might choose to run. It was a requirement written into the instrument that created the levy, with two dates attached, and (read closely) no requirement that anything be published at the end of it.
| S.I. 441/2024 in operation | 1 Sept 2024 |
|---|---|
| Review to be instituted by | 1 Feb 2026 |
| Final levy phase, LA-permitted sites | 1 Mar 2026 |
| Review to be concluded by | 1 Sept 2026 |
What is exempt today
The counter-intuitive part, and the reason the review matters: it is the clean material that pays the levy, not the dirty. Greenfield soil and stone sent to recovery as waste attracts €10/t. Non-greenfield soil and stone, whether previously developed land or contaminated, is exempt from the recovery levy under regulation 5(1)(i).
| Waste recovery levy | €10/t |
|---|---|
| Greenfield soil & stone to recovery | Levied |
| Non-greenfield soil & stone to recovery | Exempt |
| Registered by-product movement | Not waste, no levy |
| Landfill levy, general | €85/t |
| Landfill levy, greenfield soil & stone | €10/t |
This is not a loophole to be exploited. Non-greenfield material is more expensive to handle overall, gate fees for contaminated soil are far higher, and it cannot use the BP-N002/2024 by-product route at all. But on the levy line specifically, the exemption is real, and it is the exemption under review.
Three outcomes, none of them announced
Set out in the order they would change your costs, not in order of likelihood, because we have no basis for ranking them. The first is the position in force today, by default rather than by announcement. The other two remain available to the Minister at any time: what expired on 1 September was the deadline for reviewing the exemptions, not the power to change them.
Exemptions unchanged · the position today
The regime stays as it is. Greenfield soil and stone continues to pay €10/t as waste and €0 as a registered by-product; non-greenfield stays exempt. Nothing in your planning changes.
The non-greenfield exemption is removed
Every tonne of soil and stone going to recovery as waste becomes levied, whatever its origin. Brownfield and made-ground material picks up a €10/t line it does not carry today: on a 35,000 t scheme, €350,000 that was not in the tender. Note the trap: that material cannot use BP-N002/2024, which is greenfield-only, so the by-product answer for it is the slower single-case route through EDEN, with an EPA determination rather than a five-day standstill. Anyone planning for this outcome should be planning for weeks of lead time, not days.
Carve-outs are widened
Levy pressure on soil and stone falls. The compliance obligations do not move. Article 27, registration, the standstill, the chain-of-custody documents and the haulier permit position all stay exactly where they are. Only the financial argument for using the by-product route weakens.
What this changes for you
Nothing has changed, and nothing about the review was ever going to change it in your favour. If you move greenfield soil and stone, the €10/t has been live since 1 March 2026 and the by-product route already avoids it. A review of whether existing exemptions are still necessary could only have left the levy alone or widened it, so the honest reading of the passed deadline is not relief. It is one fewer reason to expect this to get cheaper.
The one thing worth doing is knowing which of your material is greenfield and which is not, because that classification decides both your levy exposure today and your exposure if the exemption goes. It is a question most schemes can answer from the site investigation they already hold.
Straight questions
- Which exemption was under review?
- The exemptions in S.I. No. 441 of 2024 from the €10/t waste recovery levy. For this industry the one that matters is regulation 5(1)(i), which exempts non-greenfield soil and stone. The instrument required the exemptions to be reviewed, with the review instituted by 1 February 2026 and concluded by 1 September 2026.
- Is the review over, then?
- Its deadline is. Regulation 5(2) required the Minister to conclude a review by 1 September 2026; it did not require the outcome to be published, laid before the Oireachtas, or acted on. So a review may well have concluded with no change and no announcement, and there is no way to tell that apart from a review whose outcome has simply not been released yet.
- So contaminated soil is cheaper to dispose of than clean soil?
- On the recovery levy alone, yes, and it surprises people every time. Greenfield soil and stone sent to recovery as waste attracts the €10/t levy; non-greenfield soil and stone is exempt from it. That is not a loophole, it is the drafting. It does not make non-greenfield material cheap overall, since gate fees for contaminated material are substantially higher and it cannot use the BP-N002/2024 by-product route at all, but the levy line itself does not apply.
- Will the exemption be removed?
- It has not been, and nothing currently signals that it will be. But the deadline that has passed was the review's, not the exemption's: amending regulation 5(1) is a separate power the Minister can exercise on any day, by a new statutory instrument, with no public consultation and no minimum notice required. Anyone who tells you the position is now fixed is overreading a silence.
- So what would we actually see if it changed?
- A statutory instrument: one amending S.I. No. 441 of 2024, or a fresh one replacing it, since either is open to the Minister. Do not count on advance warning. The instrument that created this levy was signed on 2 September 2024, states that it came into operation on 1 September 2024, and its making was notified in Iris Oifigiúil on 6 September: in force before it was signed, and gazetted five days after it was in force. The trace you can rely on is that regulations under section 73A are laid before both Houses of the Oireachtas and may be annulled within 21 sitting days. We watch the statute book, the department, the EPA and Dáil questions daily, and we will say what we see; we are not promising you weeks of notice, because the precedent says there may be none.
- Could the €10 itself go up?
- Yes. Section 73A(3)(b) of the Waste Management Act 1996 caps the recovery levy at €120 per tonne, so the €10 in force is 8.3% of what the Act allows. Subsection (4) lets the Minister amend the amount once, and once only, in each financial year, and subsection (5) caps a single increase at €50 a tonne. Two limits on that reassurance: those subsections govern the amount, not the exemptions, which are a question of which waste is levied at all; and subsection (6) allows different amounts for different activities, so a change aimed at one class of waste need not look like a rate change.
- Does this change anything about the by-product route?
- No. Article 27 and BP-N002/2024 sit outside the levy entirely: material that qualifies as a by-product is not waste, so no levy arises on it under any version of these exemptions. What the review can change is how much material has a reason to use the route.
- Should I wait for the outcome before doing anything?
- No. If you move greenfield soil and stone it is levied today, at €10 a tonne, and has been since the final phase came in on 1 March 2026. Note what the review could and could not have done: regulation 5(2) required a review of whether the existing exemptions were still necessary, so its range ran from leaving them alone to narrowing them. It was never a route to relief for greenfield material, which is not exempt in the first place. What it could have done is add non-greenfield material to what is levied, and it did not.
General information, not legal advice, and not a prediction of any regulatory outcome. Statutory references: Circular Economy (Waste Recovery Levy) Regulations 2024 (S.I. No. 441 of 2024); Waste Management (Landfill Levy) (Amendment) Regulations 2024 (S.I. No. 442 of 2024); EPA National By-Product Criteria BP-N002/2024.
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