Mick Wallace (Wexford, Independent) | Oireachtas source

In a built-up area like Dublin, or in an old city, there will always be many contaminated sites. I have rarely bought a clean one. There was some element of contamination in most of the sites we bought in Dublin. Some were worse than others. Sometimes it was not a huge issue, but sometimes it cost up to €500,000 to clean a site before we could start excavating or piling. Any developer who buys a site in Dublin without checking the amount of contamination is very silly.

Contamination comes from many areas, but much of it has come from the tipping of waste over the years, particularly in in-fill sites. If there was space to tip rubbish, they used that space and they filled it. That is where the contamination usually comes from. It settled and more stuff went over it, including clay, and it might not have been visible, but if someone were buying land and paying too much money for it, they would want to be testing it out to see what contamination was in it. I remember getting caught once with a site up around the North Circular Road, where the contamination was severe and I had not realised it. It cost us about €500,000 to get rid of the contamination.

How will contamination be measured? What does "contaminated" mean? There are so many degrees of it. The Government is opening a hornet's nest. It is a good idea to bring in legislation that means builders will pay a levy whether the site is contaminated or not, because it puts the onus on the buyer to check how much contamination is in it so that he is not overpaying for a site that is contaminated. He is taking on a great deal of extra work before he can develop it and he must factor that in when he is buying it. That would be better than letting the land-banker, who might have held it for 10 or 20 years, sell a faulty product. A contaminated site is a faulty product and if a person does not detect the contamination before buying it, he or she has bought a pig in a bag, which is not a great idea.

If the Government ensures all sites, including contaminated ones, are caught in the net of the levy, it will open people's eyes to the fact that a site may be contaminated and the buyer will have to pay the tax on it either way, so they will want to check it. There is a very simple way of testing it. If someone were digging out 4 metres, they would get someone to take a sample of no more than three or four inches, right down to four metres. They would bring it back up, send it away to be tested and then get the results. It is not a madly expensive process, but it is something people should do. I encourage the Minister of State to think again about that.

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