James Lawless (Kildare North, Fianna Fail) | Oireachtas source

I move amendment No. 24:

In page 104, between lines 27 and 28, to insert the following:

“Research and Revitalisation

215.(1) The Minister may undertake, commission, sponsor or facilitate research directed towards—(a) exploring for minerals,

(b) developing minerals,

(c) rehabilitating mine sites,

in the State and such area to which this Act applies, including, but not limited to, the following:

(i) identifying the mineral potential of extractive waste;

(ii) exploring the recycling, reusing or reclaiming of extractive waste, where this is environmentally sound;

(iii) identifying practices that will facilitate the protection of the environment;

(iv) the potential to improve remediation of the mine and associated waste as part of a process of revitalisation.

(2) Any proposals emanating from this section which involve the revisiting of formerly disused sites shall engage in a period of public consultation prior to activity commencing at that site. During this period of consultation, members of the public and other interested parties shall be free to submit their views on the proposals.”.

The amendment has a broad and specific purpose, namely, to achieve a degree of reuse of abandoned mines. It follows from conversations with the Science Foundation Ireland centre, iCRAG, in regard to the dormant potential of abandoned mines, where rare earth minerals which were once thought to be of no use were included in tailings. Some of the material that was essentially thrown away or left behind is now understood through research to be of great value in the electronics industry and elsewhere. There may be significant merit to revisiting some of these mine sites to investigate their potential. In parallel, where there may have been less than perfect clean-up or closedown of these sites in the past, there is an opportunity to revisit them, both to re-extract commercial or valuable minerals still contained within the tailings and also to avail of the opportunity to remediate and do a better job on clean-up. This also ties in very much with the idea of the circular economy whereby, rather than doing everything from scratch, we re-use, revisit and recycle. To take something that was considered waste and turn it into something that is valuable in every sense is a very valuable thing to do.

That is the specific purpose of the amendment. As Fianna Fáil spokesman on research, I believe every Department should encompass a research element to its work. The broader concept of the amendment is to support and facilitate this in legislation in that the Minister and the Department would have a remit to commission or sponsor research along the lines of the various mineral rehabilitation opportunities that still present at some of these sites.

The amendment states "any proposals emanating from this section which involves the revisiting of formerly disused sites shall engage in a period of public consultation prior to activity commencing at that site". This is to assuage the concerns of local communities that there might be activity on a site that was thought to be closed down. It is recommended in the subsection of the amendment that there be a public consultation exercise to ascertain the views of the community and stakeholders prior to anything significant proceeding on such sites. I commend the amendment to the House.

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