Billy Timmins (Wicklow, Fine Gael)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for selecting this very important issue. I raised it on the Adjournment approximately six months ago, and I have done so consistently on the Order of Business and whenever I got the opportunity, privately and publicly, with the Minister.

This is one of the great scandals of recent years. I speak not of the illegal dumping itself, but of the inactivity since the waste was uncovered. It is now more than three years since many hundreds of thousands of tonnes were uncovered in County Wicklow. I have a very specific matter on the Adjournment. It is to do with the illegal waste that has been dumped on a site known as O'Reilly's, Whitestown, Stratford-on-Slaney and the Roadstone Lands at Blessington. In three years, not an ounce of waste has been removed. It is extremely difficult to have confidence in the statutory bodies when one sees what has happened in this case. There has been no activity and nothing moved out of the site. A new housing estate has been built no distance at all from one of the sites — about as far as I am from the Minister of State at present. If he, or any of his staff, takes a trip there, he will see 20 or 30 vents a few metres from new houses. It is an absolute disgrace. The Government's own guideline issued in 1994 prescribes a distance of 50 metres from any landfill owing to the danger of gas. No new house should be constructed within that distance. Those new houses are literally on top of that illegal dump.

I will not beat around the bush, since what I seek is quite simple. I want the Minister to use his powers, as he intimated he would last October, under section 60 of the Waste Management Act 1996 to issue a direction to the relevant authorities to deal with this matter once and for all. As a local public representative, I find it very hard at this stage to go out and try to explain what is happening, since no one has any confidence that anything will be done. I beg the Minister to do something about this. The power is there in that Waste Management Act 1996. I am sure that, when it was drawn up and the use of this section was envisaged, it was for something far less significant than the extremely serious problem that we have in this case.

I have no doubt that, in the coming years, many other illegal dumps will be uncovered. The activity or inactivity of the statutory bodies to date regarding these two sites will certainly not act as a disincentive to any illegal dumper.

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