Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein)

I reiterate Sinn Féin's support for the Green Party motion as expressed by my colleague, Deputy Morgan. The Government's handling of the massive waste problem in this country has been a travesty of waste management and of democracy. During my first term in this House, I was a serving local authority member and, during those years, I saw the efforts of councillors, including of my own party, to have a real input into regional waste management plans thwarted and a sham public consultation process undertaken. The agenda was set by central Government and implemented by county and city managers over the heads of elected representatives. That was confirmed when the Government amended the law to remove powers of elected representatives to make waste management plans. That was done to impose waste incinerators on every region in this State, a project that is advancing slowly but surely. No one should make any mistake about that.

We heard the Minister, Deputy Roche, on the radio stoutly defending his plans for incinerators. I recall the same Minister saying he would not favour an incinerator in his county of Wicklow. His Cabinet colleague, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Deputy McDowell, with an eye to retaining his seat, is verbally opposing the incinerator planned for Ringsend. These are the very people who accuse those of us in the House who oppose incinerators on principle of being NIMBYs.

It was the Minister for Communications, Marine and Natural Resources, Deputy Noel Dempsey, a former Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, who removed from locally elected representatives the power to adopt waste management plans because they refused to include incineration as a means of dealing with the waste issue. Instead, he gave those powers to unelected county managers who are forced to include incinerators in the regional waste plans because that is Government policy.

Local communities, like those in Duleek and my area of Carrickroe, in north Monaghan, are now faced with incinerators being built in their locality contrary to the wishes of communities. That is unacceptable. I pay tribute to those communities which are fighting tooth and nail, and with few resources, to ensure that the environment they grew up in is passed on to their children in as good, if not better, a condition than they inherited.

Local democracy has been incinerated by this Government. In our capital city, councillors voted to exclude the Ringsend waste incinerator from the development plan. The city council voted democratically against this incinerator, yet this week, my party colleague, Councillor Daithí Doolan, exposed the fact that the city management has spent €10.5 million of public money promoting this unwanted scheme. A total of €10.5 million has been paid out of public coffers to advance this project, including the procurement process and so-called public awareness. Of that, €104,000 has been spent by the city council on so-called public information sessions, newsletters, advertisements, posters and letters. As Councillor Doolan stated:

The millions wasted on this public relations racket should rightly have been invested in promoting reduction of waste and invested in our fledgling recycling industry. That would have made a real difference to the waste crisis facing this City.

I refute the allegations of the Minister and his colleagues in the Dáil and in the media that those who oppose incineration have no alternatives. For many years, the two main parties that make up the Technical Group — Sinn Féin and the Green Party — have had detailed practical policies on how the principles of reduce, reuse and recycle can be put into effect. During my first term in the Dáil, Sinn Féin produced a detailed regional plan for waste management in my region covering counties Cavan, Monaghan, Louth and Meath, including an address of the significant agricultural waste problem.

Communities who oppose incinerators are the same communities who have consistently demanded more and better recycling facilities. People are ready and willing to support more initiatives to reduce waste, but this Government has been found wanting. It has failed to require industry to reduce packaging waste which ordinary householders end up paying for in refuse charges. It has privatised local authority refuse collection. This has left people on low incomes without the waiver scheme they availed of when refuse collection services were managed by local authorities. Those schemes were brought in to aid those for whom waste charges were clearly a heavy burden. At the very least we need private operators who are under contract to local authorities to operate waiver schemes. What is really needed is the reversal of the privatisation of waste management services.

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