Dáil debates

Wednesday, 20 July 2011

10:00 pm

Photo of Anthony LawlorAnthony Lawlor (Kildare North, Fine Gael)

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise this issue on the Adjournment. I will give a brief history on the landfill site at Kerdiffstown, County Kildare, close to which I live. In January a large-scale fire on the site made national headlines. The fire was associated with material that had been left lying to one side of the main landfill site. There was also the potential for contamination from leachate from the site. I looked at some of the analysis of the leachate and there was potential for it moving towards a tributary of the Liffey, which is upstream of the Leixlip treatment plant which supplies water to much of north Kildare and west Dublin.

When the EPA eventually got control, it had to deal with a number of issues. First was a serious issue in the locality with regard to the odours being emitted from the site. The EPA has installed some gas extraction facilities and the gas is being flared off. It is also monitoring water in the locality constantly to ensure the leachate is not spreading towards the tributary. To date, the EPA has spent €2.9 million on this phase of the landfill's remediation.

Phase two of the process is the planning and design of the remediation and may involve requests for planning permission to develop cells to which material may be safely moved. The third phase is the actual remediation, which may take up to five years and cost approximately €30 million. From where will this money come? The EPA is pursuing the companies that operated the landfill site. As most of them are in liquidation or receivership, it is doubtful that the EPA will be successful in garnering money from them through the courts. The EPA is also pursuing their directors as individuals, but one would not be too optimistic about securing funding in this way either.

I am delighted the Minister is present, as I wish to ask him about another source of funding, namely, the Environment Fund, which was set up under the Waste Management (Amendment) Act 2001 and was to be used for activities that were of benefit to the environment. The use of this fund for the site's remediation would be of benefit to the environment, given the constant odour problem and the potential of leachate entering a tributary of the Liffey.

Since the remediation's approximate cost will be €30 million, one may well ask whether there would be sufficient money in the Environment Fund. As of 2010, the fund generated €60 million. By 30 June this year, it had generated €30 million, a level consistent with its returns during the past three years. Based on the 2009 figures, it has a surplus of approximately €40 million. I presume the Comptroller and Auditor General's figures, when published, will also show a surplus for 2010.

While I understand the works could last for up to five years, will the Minister set aside money from the Environment Fund to remediate this landfill? If we do not remediate now, it could become problem. Remediating it over five years would be cheaper than sitting by in the belief that we had done a good job for the time being and waiting eight to ten years for the economy to pick up and for us to have money, since by that time we could have a more expensive environmental disaster to remediate.

Will the Minister ring-fence some of the Environment Fund's surplus to secure and remediate this site so that it can either be brought into public ownership or a charge can be put on the land, through which its owners would be required to pay something towards the site's remediation? If he does, we will have cleaned up an environmental hazard in the locality of Naas.

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