Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

An Bord Pleanála has granted permission to Dublin City Council to develop a municipal waste incinerator with a capacity of 600,000 tonnes at Poolbeg. This incinerator is provided for in the Dublin regional waste management plan. That plan is the statutory responsibility of the relevant local authorities led by Dublin City Council. While the Minister has certain powers under the Act in regard to these plans, they are limited and it is quite wrong to suggest he could use any of his powers. Some people outside of the House have suggested he should use section 24 to vary a management plan in a way that would halt the Poolbeg incinerator. That is not correct. The clear advice available to him is that this power cannot be used in a retrospective fashion to seek to halt a project which is already the subject of a contractual arrangement and applications for planning consents.

In line with national policy, the Exchequer does not fund heavy waste infrastructure, landfills and waste energy incinerator plants. They are to be provided as a purely private sector commercial initiative or by way of a public private partnership with local authorities, as this one is, and Dublin City Council, acting for the four Dublin local authorities, has entered into a public private partnership to advance the Poolbeg incinerator. The planning process operates independently of Ministers and of Government collectively. This is as determined by the Oireachtas for very good reasons. The project will also require a waste licence from the Environmental Protection Agency. The waste licence, as with planning, is independent of Ministers.

On the Government policy on waste, the programme for Government identifies the potential for other technologies such as the mechanical and biological treatment, the MBT as it is known, to reduce our reliance on incineration. I raised this in the House when asked about it two or three weeks ago. The Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, Deputy Gormley, has presented figures produced by his Department showing that with a developed MBT system, the quantity of residual waste requiring disposal, other than landfill, would be reduced to some 400,000 tonnes by the next seven or eight years. These figures are based on waste arising of 3.2 million tonnes nationally reducing to 1.7 million tonnes through a recycling rate of 50%. The programme for Government also provides for a comprehensive review of our overall approach to waste management. That review will encompass an examination of these alternatives to incineration and how they might be promoted. The Minister, Deputy Gormley, has already prepared the terms of reference for this review and has brought them to Government. The steering group for the review process will meet later this week.

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