James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I welcome Mr. Meagher to the committee and wish him the best of luck with his new position. I know he is five weeks into the job and has probably had a baptism of fire. Tonight, the committee might help him with that because he is already taking questions thick and fast and is learning on the job.

I represent north Kildare. With the Bog of Allen, we are never too far from the bog, particularly in north-west Kildare. It is very close to the hearts of the people in the county in every sense, as a resource, an amenity and our heritage. I often think of James Joyce's short story, "The Dead", with its closing lines with the snow "falling softly upon the Bog of Allen". It is close to the heart of the Irish nation as much as it is to those in my county.

Mr. Meagher said he will undertake some site visits. I am sure he is familiar with the Drehid landfill in north-west Kildare which is due for expansion.

It has had an uneasy peace with its nearest neighbours but that has been jeopardised in recent times. It is one of the largest landfills in the country at this stage. It has been discussed in the Dáil with the Minister and with various other interested parties. With the intensity of landfills and the shortage of such capacity around the country, more and more municipal waste from the Dublin region is heading towards the Drehid site in Kildare. Last year it exceeded its capacity before the end of year and operations had to ground to a halt. There is an issue currently in that an application for a hazardous waste licence is being made. It is bypassing Kildare County Council and going through An Bord Pleanála directly in terms of the strategic infrastructure. I have seen that happen previously with other applications. I was a member of that council at one stage and I have seen how that can often be counterproductive in that the local authority becomes an objector and rather than being something of a facilitator. It can go the other way.

The bulk of the local community is not opposed to the presence of landfill and there is a working relationship, but what is of major concern is the haul routes. There are four haul routes in the planning but, in reality, one or two of them, for example, the Sallins-Clane-Prosperous-Millicent route is a rural back road which will be subject to heavy traffic at different hours of the day, even during down hours, at times when children would be walking home from school and when people are out and about. It is a real concern. The fact that additional volumes of waste will be going into that landfill site will cause great alarm in the community. The nature of the material and the fact that it will be hazardous has already caused alarm. As recently as yesterday, I was contacted about that. With respect to when Mr. Meagher is making a visit to that site, I might correspond with him about that after the meeting separately or in further correspondence, but I would suggest that he explores other haul routes. There are four haul routes available but only one or two of them are being used. I would say the Kilshanroe-Edenderry road would be a more appropriate haul route and there may be other ways to access the site rather than the one that is being currently used. That is what I would say on the Drehid site.

I wish to refer to a solar facility being developed at Timahoe North-Timahoe South in my constituency. The plan is that it will have a 500 MW capacity. It has been reasonably well received. Often energy facilities can have a mixed reaction but there is reasonable openness to it. People are on board with renewable energy and understandably have made that transition. There is not necessarily opposition to it yet. Mr. Meagher might need to check this and come back to me on it but in terms of community gain, I understand that the Mount Lucas site down the road has a 84 MW capacity. I understand there are grants in the region of €85,000 available to the local community. For a facility with a 500 MW capacity, I would hope that €500,000 would be made available, if I could be so blunt as to use the same ratio for the Timahoe site. I do not know if there are plans in that regard but I certainly hope that there are. It may help to sweeten the deal for the community. One of the reasons people are so accepting of the Drehid site is that there is a good relationship with the community and a good grant scheme in operation. Mr. Meagher might respond to me on those points.

We have a few raised bogs in north Kildare. There are a couple of sites with which I am familiar where turf-cutting has been prohibited on individual plots of turf. I am not sure if the areas are designated special areas of conversation or natural heritage areas but strictures have been imposed. I understand that sometimes a deal can be done or an arrangement can be made where Bord na Móna can work with the landowners and the National Parks and Wildlife Service to do a swap. I am aware of a couple of instances of that. Again, perhaps we could correspond about that off-line. Mr. Meagher might be able to give me a general answer on that now, and perhaps we would correspond off-line about the specific cases that I want to raise.