Trevor Sargent (Dublin North, Green Party)

Ba mhaith liom mo bhuíochas a ghabháil le gach duine a labhair sa díospóireacht, go mórmhór na daoine a thug tacaíocht don rún ón gComhaontas Glas, le Fine Gael, Páirtí an Lucht Oibre, Sinn Féin agus leis na Teachtaí Neamhspleácha.

When we first drafted this motion, it was in response to the shameful growing international waste levels which Forfás highlighted. However, it seems we have an even greater crisis on our hands following this debate, which is the failure of the Minister, Deputy Roche, to take any action to reduce waste levels. Such action has nothing to do with recycling, dumping or burning — it is about reduction. On that yardstick, this Minister and this Government are an abject failure. The Minister's insults — we got plenty of them last night — are no use whatsoever to the communities faced with plans for incinerators, landfills or any of the quick-fix solutions with which this Government has a fixation.

Our motion is an honest attempt to address the need to reduce waste amounts generated under the watch of the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, who has responsibility for waste reduction in the first instance. However, we now know that the Minister is more familiar with obscure Canadian rock music than he is with waste reduction. Guelph in Ontario, Canada is an example of a city that faced up to the principle of looking after its own waste locally in every useful way possible. The incentives to reduce, reuse and recycle were strengthened in that city by a ban in the province of Ontario on the location of landfill on agricultural land or any wetland.

There are reasons to be cautious. There is a need for a level of cleanfill, but that is not what we are getting from this Government. Landfill has given rise to a report in The Irish Times entitled Birth Defect Risks Higher for Babies Living near Dumps. This is in reference to a study carried out by Imperial College London, which noted no particular difference between domestic refuse dumps and hazardous waste dumps. When an incinerator was proposed 20 years ago in Guelph, the people said "No". This was mainly because they did not want to see material burned which could be recycled. As they say about incinerators, "when you get a pig, you have to feed it".

There are many companies creating jobs that do not want incinerators. Representatives from Wellman International, located on the Meath-Cavan border, have described to me that an incinerator would be a travesty for their company because an incinerator would demand the same material that their company uses for recycling.

There are many examples of incinerators causing untold problems for communities. A newspaper report, entitled Cancer Village Fights for Justice over Incinerator, provides such an example from France. The report states that senior French officials face a toxins inquiry. Is that what the Minister wants to give us and is that what he is proposing? Let the record show that up to now the Minister, Deputy McDowell, has not shown up here for this debate. Likewise, when the Green Party had a previous debate on waste and gave him an opportunity to set out his position on the Poolbeg incinerator plan, he did not show up either.

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