John Gormley (Dublin South East, Green Party)

Possibly more importantly, the processes for a public private partnership for a waste facility do not differ markedly from those which will operate under the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Bill. Hence, it is not a big deal that this project will not be developed under the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Bill. There is nothing to prevent Dublin City Council from using the Planning and Development (Strategic Infrastructure) Bill for this proposal if it so wishes. If the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government wishes to rebut or clarify any of these points, I would like to hear him so do.

The Minister knows only too well that the last major infrastructural project on the Poolbeg peninsula has not gone as planned. The Taoiseach, the Minister and other dignitaries opened the waste water treatment plant — again the largest in Europe — with great fanfare. Since then, residents from the locality and beyond have been subjected to the foulest of odours from this plant which is running at capacity. One wonders how Dublin City Council and the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, who signed off on it, could have got it so badly wrong. However, they did so.

The Minister appears to believe that big is beautiful because he has authorised the construction beside the sewage treatment plant of what will possibly be the largest mass burn incinerator in Europe. The building, and not merely its chimney stacks, will be the height of Liberty Hall and the length of Croke Park. The chimney stacks will be approximately half the height of the red and white chimneys on the Poolbeg peninsula. This will be a monstrosity, even in visual and planning terms. Moreover, this monster will require feeding for 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for 30 years. For 30 years, Ireland's waste management strategy will be committed to incineration, during which hundreds of trucks will trundle through Sandymount and Ringsend daily and the costs of incineration will spiral beyond the original estimates.

Although the Minister has made a mess of the sewage treatment plant, no one has been held accountable. No one has lost his or her job or has held up his or her hand and admitted guilt. This is a prime example of incompetence and a lack of transparency and accountability.

Fianna Fáil and the Progressive Democrats now want to repeat the trick. An independent expert, to whom reference was made in the motion, has stated that the costs given by Dublin City Council are inaccurate. The expert in question is Mr. Joe McCarthy, with whom officials in the Department of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government will be very familiar because he exposed the debacle of electronic voting and showed it could not work properly.

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