Arthur Morgan (Louth, Sinn Fein)

I support the Fine Gael motion before the House, as does my party. I am a little disappointed it did not go further in terms of calling on the Government to live up to the commitments under Kyoto. With the few weeks the Government has left to it for all time, or certainly for a long time into the future, it probably was not worth its while.

With regard to dealing with CO2 emissions in the north east, many people were delighted to see reports in the media on Sunday that Indaver was threatening, if that is the right word, to pull out of Ireland unless the Government imposed a €5 per tonne tax on landfill and handed it over to the company. It claimed its incineration system would not work without such a windfall from the taxpayers. The notion is absurd that taxpayers would fund an already very rich company for coming to Ireland and poisoning its people through its incineration system, yet it expects taxpayers to shovel money into its coffers.

The Government has so far indicated it will not bow to such a threat but, as with everything else connected with this Government, it is difficult to believe. If the €5 per tonne landfill charge were applied, it would mean an extra entrance fee to landfill of approximately €200 per truck. While we want alternatives other than landfill, if this were the case, we could expect householders to have to pay perhaps twice as much for their wheelie bin service, which would have serious consequences in terms of additional fly-tipping and other waste issues.

With regard to the proposed incinerator at Carranstown, County Meath, which is near to where I live, the level of CO2 emissions from that poisonous plant is estimated at 61,000 tonnes per annum. There is no doubt Indaver would burn plastics, rubber and all sorts of products with a high calorific value in order to keep its costs down and try to make the plant efficient.

I note Deputy Coveney has just arrived in the Chamber. I commend him for standing with the Irish people recently when he voted against the European Commission's attempt to recategorise incinerators as waste recovery rather than waste disposal — we all know it is waste disposal. Unfortunately, other members of the Fine Gael Party did not follow Deputy Coveney's good example and a number of them voted with the Commission——

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