Phil Hogan (Carlow-Kilkenny, Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I get worried when a Deputy says that I must intervene in something. The Poolbeg project, as Deputy Humphreys indicated, is provided for in the Dublin regional waste management plan, for which the four Dublin local authorities have statutory responsibility under the Waste Management Acts. The facility is being advanced by Dublin city Council, albeit with the caveats that the Deputy has outlined, in conjunction with Covanta Energy and DONG Energy.

The project received planning approval as far back as November 2007 and was granted a waste licence from the EPA in December 2008. As the Deputy indicated, the facility is intended to have a capacity of 600,000 tonnes. The position is that, in accordance with the provisions of the of the Waste Management Acts, the preparation and adoption of a waste management plan is the statutory responsibility of the local authority and, under section 60(3) of the Act, the Minister is precluded from exercising any power or control in relation to the performance by a local authority, in particular circumstances, of a statutory function vested in it.

As the Deputy will be aware, my predecessor appointed Mr. John Hennessy to have a look at this contract under section 224 of the Local Government Act 2001 and to examine the potential financial risks associated with the Poolbeg project within a given set of scenarios. As consideration of that report had not been completed when I came into office, it fell to me to consider the report's findings.

In June 2011, I published the report prepared by Mr. Hennessy in order to ensure that as much information as possible is available to the public while respecting the confidential nature of certain information provided by Mr. Hennessy in the course of his work. The report was therefore redacted to protect commercially sensitive information. At the time of publication I indicated that much had changed since the report was commissioned and there would be further changes as I finalised a new waste policy. Mr. Hennessy provided a very good report but he was working within a set of scenarios which had been narrowly defined for him and this somewhat restricted the applicability of the report. Having consulted my Government colleagues, I concluded there was no national waste policy justification for intervening in the matter.

The position remains that decisions in relation to the Poolbeg project are a matter for the two parties concerned. I understand that the parties are in a period of review and that an update was provided to Dublin City Council earlier this month. Queries concerning the status of discussions, contract terms and costs of the project are not a matter for me at this stage, notwithstanding what the Deputy said about the amount of money that has been spent on the project to date.

My role at this stage is to provide certainty in terms of waste policy, which I have done, and I will provide an update on the recent publication of the new national waste policy later on. I can assure the Deputy that investment in all methodologies and technologies is difficult to finance and is not readily available for any project. The State, through the local authority system, is not in a particularly healthy state financially to intervene in order to provide the necessary interventions in regard to waste policy. I agree with the Deputy that we need to get certainty on this, and to do so sooner rather than later. I am disappointed that it has taken so long to come to a conclusion, one way or the other, on this contractual obligation in which Dublin City Council and Covanta are involved. I will closely monitor the situation in the coming weeks to determine if there is any hope of coming to a conclusion and at the end of the year perhaps I will review the matter.

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