Simon Harris (Wicklow, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

It is an astonishing sum of money. Again, I want to acknowledge and put on the record of this committee the good work I believe the Department is doing in dealing with these serious issues at a European level. I will now move to an area in which I do not feel it is doing as good a job, which is, again, an issue I was directly involved with during my time on Wicklow County Council and which I have continued to pursue during my time in Dáil Éireann, with no satisfaction whatsoever in regard to the response I have received from the Department. This is the issue of Ballybeg, which long predates my involvement in public life. To remind the witnesses of some of the details, in 2003 a waste permit was granted for lands at Ballybeg in Rathnew. This permit was subsequently shredded, and I believe the EPA will be aware of this because it was directly referenced in the comments after the permit was shredded, which were to the effect that whoever shredded the permit, for whatever reason, realised they had better re-issue it because the original copy had been lodged with the EPA. Since then, this has been an issue of significant concern for all public representatives in County Wicklow. It gives me a worrying insight into how the Department has not picked up on concerns when they are fed up the food chain, if one likes, and passed on from local authority level to the Department.

In January 2010, which is seven years after this waste permit was granted, shredded and re-issued, I attended a special meeting of Wicklow County Council where I and my colleagues on a cross-party basis voted to ask the then Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, under the Local Government Act, to conduct a local inquiry, which is a pretty speedy and cost-efficient way of establishing what happened. There was widespread support for this. My predecessor in Dáil Éireann, Deputy Liz McManus, raised the matter in the Dáil on 1 February 2010. She was told on the record of the Dáil by a Minister of State that the issue would be examined carefully. Time moved on and nothing happened other than that the council received an acknowledgment from the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government stating it was looking into the matter. When I was elected to the Dáil, I tabled parliamentary questions on the issue on a number of occasions, and I most recently tabled a question in June 2012, when I was told the Department had not made up its mind and would consider it in due course.

My question is not even about Ballybeg, although I am pretty disgusted at the way these issues, having been passed up the line by local representatives, have been sat on, in my view, by the Department. My question is about a broader issue. We were meant to have local government structures. We have a Local Government Act, we have a Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government that obviously interacts with local government and we have very official ways in which that interaction should take place. We are all about reform at the moment and are talking a lot about local government reform. Yet here is a situation in which a local authority passes a democratic motion under the Local Government Act to ask the Department of the Environment, Community and Local Government to consider setting up an inquiry, and that takes place in 2010, seven years after this issue was first highlighted - the EPA will be aware of the issue also, so I may ask Ms Burke for a comment shortly. A special request was put in, but nothing happened. Next, a Deputy raised it in the Dáil on 1 February 2010 and it was said the matter would be looked at, but nothing happened. Then we had a general election and new Deputies were elected, and I asked the question and got fed up asking the question because I knew the answer.

I am not sure the Department is ever going to arrive at a conclusion. First, in regard to this issue, my view is now as it was then, namely, that something seriously questionable happened in Wicklow and needs to be looked into. However, the broader point is that even if the Department vehemently disagrees with me and the local representatives who passed that motion, does Ms Tallon not find it utterly unacceptable that, ten years after the alleged incident happened and more than three years after the council sent correspondence to the Department, the Department has still failed to respond on the matter?