Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)

I welcome the opportunity to speak to this very important motion. There is a problem in my constituency with practical implications. Kildare County Council's civic amenity centre in Athy in south Kildare was not opened for well over a year after its construction because the resources did not exist to run it. This year the council has set aside €620,000 to run the centre and it anticipates a grant of €100,000 from the Government. The running cost will therefore be somewhere in the region of €500,000. The scheme cannot be run on the cheap and none of us expects that it can. If one takes a long-term view on the running of landfill sites, even closed ones, one will realise that recycling makes sense.

There is no civic amenity site in the entire constituency of Kildare North. Surveys conducted last year show some of the more enthusiastic proponents of recycling live in that constituency. The limited number of bottle, can and clothes banks were used extensively. Even if the council could cover the capital cost of a civic amenity site, it would not be in a position to run a second facility because it could not meet the cost. This is the reality.

The combined population of the towns of Leixlip, Celbridge, Maynooth and Kilcock, which form only part of the constituency, greatly exceeds the population of Waterford city. The cluster of Naas, Sallins, Kill and Clane, which have a combined population of approximately 35,000, warrants such a facility, yet there is none available. There is no point in driving 20 or 30 miles to such a facility because this defeats the entire purpose.

Kildare County Council had to postpone the introduction of the brown bin facility because it does not have the finances to run it. The will exists but the infrastructure is woefully inadequate. Despite the impression that Kildare is a well-off county, it receives one of the lowest transfers from the local government fund per capita and it is the largest contributor per capita from the motor tax fund. Some 36% of all motor tax collected in Kildare is spent elsewhere. The council obviously cannot afford basic facilities.

Some years ago, Kilcock was identified as a location for a hazardous municipal waste incinerator. The €65 million proposal was to burn 150,000 tonnes of waste per year at a site 500 yards from the local primary school. I am thankful that An Bord Pleanála rejected the proposal in this case in 2000. Two positive results of the proposal were that people got together and adopted a more progressive approach to recycling and they informed themselves regarding the difficulties associated with incineration. These were the only positive outcomes of the proposal.

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