Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Thursday, 6 December 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment

Waste Policy and Incineration: Discussion

2:00 pm

Mr. Matthew Collins:

It provides that service on behalf of all local authorities as a shared service so it ensures a better quality of regulation and consistency in regulatory decisions. There is a role for local authorities in issuing permits. It is illegal for other operators that do not have permits for particular areas to collect waste in those areas.

I thought the Deputy's question about landfill was for the EPA. It was about emissions being released from old landfill sites. There is probably a number of technical issues here. These are historic landfill sites. The goal is to capture the methane that is being released as a natural process from landfill sites as the material decays. It is being captured and converted by flaring into CO2 so that has a less damaging impact on the climate. That is the purpose of the process so, in a sense, it is mitigating the damage being done by waste landfills. If one thinks about what we are doing with waste to energy, one can see that it is the same thing. We are-----

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