Fergus O'Dowd (Louth, Fine Gael)

This is an important debate to which members of a community faced with the prospect of an incineration plant in their area are listening, and in respect of which they have expressed serious concerned. I want to respond to issues covered in the Government's amendment, particularly the last part of it which refers to the system through which objections can be put forward.

I will reflect briefly on the regional waste management plans. A criticism of those plans is that while each county council in the regions discussed those plans separately, the authorities collectively did not discuss those plans. Effectively, it emerged that one county was told an incinerator plant would not be located in its area but that a landfill facility would be located there. Another facility was to be located in another county and the location of an incineration plant was to be decided based on a regional waste plan and a strategy by a consultant who would decide where it might be sited. In the north eastern region that process was not followed. It was a case of pass the buck in terms of a proposed incineration plant and it transpired that the plant was not located on the site identified in the regional waste management plan but where private enterprise decided it should be located, which is near where I live. I was concerned about its location there, particularly when that location was not included in the plan. What is wrong with the system is that the structure is not clear. It was not part of the regional waste management plan that the proposed incineration plant would be sited in Poolbeg. That is the problem and the reason people are up in arms and concerned about it.

A further issue is, namely, what were councillors told about proposed incineration plants. In County Louth at the request of our consultants P. J. Rudden, we visited incinerator plants in Denmark and in Germany. The plant in Germany was well known and it will remain in my mind. It was called Thermoselect and it was identified as a new modern process, well worth viewing and investigating. We went to Karlsruhe to view the plant. The incinerator looked fine but there did not seem to be anything moving though it. We were told there was a technical problem at the time and that everything was fine. We spoke to the manager and then went to listen to a briefing from the person representing the company. Councillors from County Louth and some of our officials were there when a Fianna Fáil councillor from Dundalk, the representative of Thermoselect, walked in the door. He told us why we should opt for the process used in this company in Germany. I wondered what was going on, what this councillor was doing there and what he knew about incineration. I did not know what was going on but I had no confidence in that company.

See this speech in context