Mr. Seamus McCarthy:

Overall, remediation costs incurred by public bodies up to June 2013 were almost €119 million, with further expected costs for the identified sites that may exceed €66 million. Whereas there are legal options to recover costs from polluters, this may be difficult in practice and may also be costly in itself. The Department has indicated that there has been limited recovery of cost from those responsible for unlicensed sites but that legal proceedings are under way in a number of cases. The remediation of land at any site is generally a long-term project, spanning several accounting periods. Accordingly, I consider that it should be accounted for in a similar manner to the accounting for capital investment projects. This should include the disclosure of the estimated contingent liability, the contracted commitments details of the amount spent to date and the amount spent in the current report period. I also consider that funding from multiple State sources for the same clean-up project should be disclosed in a single primary disclosure note so that the full cost of remediation of a site can be readily identified.