Eamon Gilmore (Dún Laoghaire, Labour)

I congratulate the Leas-Cheann Comhairle on his election to the post and also congratulate the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy John Gormley, on his appointment. I have great personal regard for Deputy Gormley and wish him well in his office.

Last night the Minister told this House that he is prohibited by his new office from commenting on the proposal to build an incinerator on the Poolbeg Peninsula. The Minister is wrong. Not only is he not prevented from commenting on the proposal, but he is obliged to clarify for the planning authorities the Government's position on incineration.

The Minister cites section 30 of the Planning and Development Act 2000 as grounds for non-intervention on Poolbeg. That section reads "notwithstanding section 28 or 29, the Minister shall not exercise any power or control in relation to any particular case with which a planning authority or the board is or may be concerned". As the wording makes clear, the section is referring back to the two preceding sections, which deal with ministerial guidelines and policy directives under the planning Act itself. In other words, the section prohibits the Minister from using his powers under the Act to influence the outcome of any particular planning case such as, for example, an appeal to An Bord Pleanála on an individual planning application for a one-off house.

The section has nothing at all to do with the subject of the motion before the House, which urges the Minister to use his powers under the Waste Management Act 1996. His legal argument is a fig leaf and a distraction, a continuation of his perverse attempt to portray himself as one who has been rendered powerless by law as a result of his accession to power. A major infrastructure project such as the Poolbeg incinerator is qualitatively different from the routine planning appeals envisaged by section 30 of the Planning and Development Act.

In determining planning permission for major infrastructural projects An Bord Pleanála is required to take account of Government policy. Recently, in deciding to grant planning permission for the toxic waste incinerator in Ringaskiddy, it relied almost entirely on the fact that is was Government policy to provide an incinerator. In the Ringaskiddy case, the board's inspector who conducted the oral hearing issued a strong recommendation against granting planning permission but this was overturned by the board. Therefore, when An Bord Pleanála makes a decision as to whether to grant planning permission for the incinerator at Poolbeg, a major — if not the overriding — consideration will be ascertaining what is the Government's policy on incineration.

Under the Minister's three Fianna Fáil predecessors, the current Minister for Transport, Deputy Noel Dempsey, the Minister for Social and Family Affairs, Deputy Cullen, and the Minister of State at the Department of the Taoiseach, Deputy Roche, Government policy was clearly to proceed with a number of municipal waste incinerators, one of which was to be located at Poolbeg. The central question now is whether that policy has changed arising from the co-option of the Green Party into the Fianna Fáil Government. The only person who can answer that question is the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley.

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