Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Wednesday, 11 July 2018

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment

Illegal Dumping: Discussion

1:30 pm

Mr. Gerard O'Leary:

To finish the point on Deputy Stanley's question about fines. They were displayed during the programme as amounting to €5,000 on average. One of the things that we find with District Court cases, where the maximum fine is €5,000, is that infrastructural commitments will be given through the courts. We have often found that the fine may only be a few thousand euro but the infrastructure that will be put in place during the court proceedings can be quite significant. The unfortunate thing is that the infrastructure is normally what is in the licence in the first instance so it is something that is required, which brings me back to my original point which is that we have to go through a courts system at times to put infrastructure in place that the companies were required to put in in the first instance.