Bertie Ahern (Dublin Central, Fianna Fail)

The only notes I have are departmental notes. Departmental officials who are experts in this area are not spin doctors, with the greatest respect. I will try to answer the Deputy's questions. As regards incineration, there are two private sector proposed developments, one in Meath for municipal waste and one in Cork for hazardous waste. They have received planning permission and they have also received waste licences from An Bord Pleanála and the Environmental Protection Agency, respectively. It is entirely a matter for the company with these permissions as to whether the projects proceed. The State has no financial involvement as I have already said.

On 16 October when I last dealt with this matter here, An Bord Pleanála had granted permission for the expansion of the proposed plant in Meath from a capacity of 150,000 tonnes to 200,000 tonnes. This is an entirely private sector development in which there is no State or local authority involvement. As I have already said, Dublin City Council, acting on behalf of the local authorities, is proposing to construct a waste energy plant at Poolbeg in partnership with the private sector. We have no direct involvement in this project, which is the subject of applications again for An Bord Pleanála and the EPA. We are precluded by law from involvement in these processes and, therefore, I will not comment on them, and neither has the Minister, Deputy Gormley.

The programme for Government, that is Government policy, commits us to increasing recycling rates and to meeting our targets to divert biodegradable waste from landfill under the EU landfill directive. It identifies the mechanical biological treatment of waste as one of a range of technologies which can be deployed to achieve this. The Minister, Deputy Gormley, has presented figures, produced by the experts in his Department, showing that with a developed MBT system the quantity of residual waste requiring disposal in the next seven or eight years, other than landfill, will be reduced to some 400,000 tonnes by 2016. It is in that context he made his remarks. The figures are based on waste arising of 3.2 million tonnes nationally, reducing to 1.7 million tonnes through a recycling rate of 50%. Some 800,000 tonnes of this can be landfill, without exceeding our landfill directive targets and the remainder can be further reduced by the MBT to a residual fraction of 400,000 tonnes waste that cannot be landfill.

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