I, along with other Plaid colleagues, decided not to accept the 8.3 per cent pay rise that has been awarded to National Assembly Members as I feel that it would be a huge slap in the face for public sector workers.

At a time when the public sector is faced with a 1.9 per cent pay award an increase in excess of that amount would and should be greeted with dismay across Wales.

I fully accept that the workload of Assembly Members has increased following the implementation of the Government of Wales Act 2006 and we are now undertaking primary legislative work and as a trade unionist I have campaigned for an increase in pay when workers workloads increase.

I also support the principle of aligning the pay of AMs to politicians in the Northern Irish Assembly and Scottish Parliament, but when the financial settlement is so tight across Wales I do not believe that we should be receiving the recommended pay rise.

As I said, I personally have not accepted the recommended rise and have accepted 1.9 per cent.

In the next few weeks the National Assembly for Wales will debate whether to vote in favour of a proposed legislation that I recently introduced.

Recent research conducted by Plaid showed that many of Wales' councils ship some of their waste to be processed in countries outside the EU such as China, India and Brazil, and some councils do not hold the information on where their recycling ends up.

If the Assembly decides to back my proposal it will mean that local authorities will legally have to consider and report on the where their recycling takes place.

When people make the effort to recycle household waste, they do so in the belief that their council will dispose of it responsibly.

The public would take a very dim view if they thought, for example, that young people in other parts of the world were being exploited in processing waste from Wales.

This measure, if approved, should address this issue.

People need to be confident that their waste is being recycled in a non-exploitative and environmentally-friendly way.

There are issues of course regarding the capacity to recycle here in Wales and across the UK and we accept that shipping waste is sometimes necessary, but my measure, if passed, would make the whole process more transparent.

Hopefully this in turn will open up the debate in order for us to build up our capacity to recycle within our own border.