Mr. Seamus Neely:

Like Mr. O'Leary, I will touch on a couple of points. The programme touched on staffing and resources quite a bit. I wish to draw the committee's attention to the fact that Donegal County Council has 14 staff assigned to waste and litter management and enforcement, which puts us mid-table. There are 15 local authorities with more staff and 15 with the same or fewer staff. From the middle of last year, we put together a business plan and a commitment to put additional staffing in place. That will come to fruition in quarter three of this year at which stage we will have 19 staff in place, which will make us the fifth most resourced council in the country in respect of waste and litter enforcement and regulation.

I had intended to draw attention to the waste enforcement regional lead authorities but Mr. O'Leary has done so but I reiterate that this has been a great step forward for local authorities. It is early days and as time goes on, we will see the full value of them. However, they must be complemented by activity by the local authorities at individual level and resourced accordingly.

I do not agree with the metric that was used on RTÉ 1 for Donegal's place in the rankings. It is a mixture of rating and ranking and the number of permits in place per head of population was a factor. It is a useful metric to look at but it does not capture the entirety of what we are dealing with on a day-in and day-out basis. I believe the resources we had in place were sufficient at the time. We took a particular decision in the middle of last year to augment those significantly having regard to recent experiences and I will keep that area of resource application under continuous review with a firm commitment to provide additional specific resources for at least a five-year period.

I mentioned threats and risks to enforcement staff and collaboration with other agencies generally. Regulation and enforcement of waste laws is a concern for Donegal County Council and local authorities in general. It is recognised that waste is a commodity. When it is traded illegally, it can generate considerable financial benefit for those involved. In enforcing and managing that, councils and all other enforcement agencies come across people who are capable of doing things that are not always normal. This has happened in Donegal. There have been incidents where staff have been intimidated. There have been particularly insidious events which are problematic in themselves. My report largely speaks for itself regarding the three cases that were referred to in the television programme.

I indicated in the report that I would give a brief update about works that were ongoing at the time of writing on the site in Moville. Works have continued on that site in the interim. When the programme was aired, the incidents at that site were brought to the attention of the council for the first time. There was new information and they were immediately treated as complaints that required investigation. An investigation of these complaints is ongoing and all aspects of what was shown and said on the programme will be thoroughly examined. RTÉ has been contacted to secure available evidence. As part of the investigation, the council determined that it needed to excavate one particular area. It was an area that was described in the programme as almost 200 mounds. The excavations were carried out under council direction last week. The owners of the site were not present at during the excavations but had an observer present. Each mound, which was, typically, to a maximum height of 2 metres, was excavated and found to be made of shale, rock and soil. Isolated items such as tyres, of which there were approximately ten in total across the entire excavation, were found within the mounds. In the course of that excavation of the featured mounds, the mound featured more closely in the programme, which was different in appearance to the others, was also excavated. It contained some waste, which included a section of carpet; a set of curtains; a number of glass bottles; agricultural material like bale, cord, netting and some straw; and a small plastic container that was used in agriculture. No evidence of general municipal waste was found in any of the other mounds excavated. A number of loads of material that seemed to be of a construction and demolition origin and materials from agriculture and the fishing industry, some of which are overgrown, still need to be addressed at the south eastern side of that site. However, the area that was described as 200 mounds has been excavated and found to be largely made up of shale, rock and soil. I will leave it at that. I thank members for their time.