Dan Boyle (Cork South Central, Green Party)

I represent a constituency in which the process of introducing two incinerators has become well advanced as a direct result of Government interference and policy making. My constituency is being asked to take the national toxic waste incinerator as well as a domestic waster incinerator on the same site for the Cork city and county area. It has been opposed throughout a Bord Pleanála process and an Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, licence process and is being challenged in the courts.

However, as a representative for the area, I take issue with the processes that have taken place, especially the Bord Pleanála and EPA licence hearings. My colleague, Deputy Gormley, alluded to the unsatisfactory and inherently undemocratic nature of the Bord Pleanála hearing. Although a well respected planning inspector could itemise 14 grounds why a proposal should not proceed on sound planning principles, the board of An Bord Pleanála overruled him solely on the basis that it is Government policy to construct incinerators, regardless of the planning considerations. When such decisions tend to be made in a planning process which is meant to be participative and democratic, it is no wonder that public confidence in the decision-making process is undermined.

I question the Cabinet's stance in this respect. My colleague, Deputy Gormley, has already spoken of the double standards applied by the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform. My constituency colleague, the Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, exhibits a similar need to limbo dance on this issue. He appears to state that such incinerators may be opposed in one's own constituencies although they remain Government policy. However, even the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government has indicated in public that he would not wish to see an incinerator in his constituency.

Where stands collective responsibility on this issue? Has the Cabinet even voted on the matter? Has a decision been recorded, which Members can be shown, as to how and why this decision was made? I suspect it was a process of osmosis whereby the Government collectively decided on something which it thought would provide a quick-fix solution to a matter with which it would prefer not to deal.

The Government's amendment is very interesting in that, for the first time, I note the admission, to which my colleague alluded in his contribution, that incineration does not get rid of landfill. In the past, I have never seen that as a plain statement of Government policy.

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