Colm Burke (Fine Gael) | Oireachtas source

I also welcome the Minister of State. The matter I wish to raise relates to the current waste processing facility at Churchfield in Cork which has been in operation for a number of years. In fairness, the operator of the facility has been providing a very valuable service for residents in Cork city and surrounding areas. However, the volume of waste at the facility which is located in an industrial estate that is not being processed has increased substantially in the past 12 months as a result of the fact that the operator has acquired a number of smaller waste companies.

It is right in the middle of a residential area. It is continuing to cause concerns for the residents with regard to the odour in the area from the facility and the risk to health. Some of these estates in the immediate area are new housing estates, such as Willowbank, which is one of the biggest estates near it. One group of ten private houses backs onto the facility. All of them have young families and there is a health risk to the families. In 2004, planning permission was granted to Cork County Council to develop a landfill facility in Bottlehill, Cork, which is a number of miles from the city. It is a well-developed facility but is not a waste processing facility. It was built to deal with landfill. The construction of five landfill cells, an office building, a maintenance building and stormwater ponds and infrastructure including holding tanks, a site road network, a car park, security fencing and weighbridges was carried out at a total cost of €48 million, between acquiring land and building road infrastructure, but it is lying idle. A facility dealing with waste processing is now in the middle of a residential area.

I ask for a joint approach between the Department, the county council, the city council and private contractors to work towards the use of the facility built at a cost to taxpayers and the moving of waste processing facilities. I am not necessarily saying that it should be moved to the site in Bottlehill but a suitable location should be identified for the contractors to deal with this matter.

What is in place cannot be allowed to continue. One of the concerns of the residents is that the value of their houses has decreased by 50%. They could not sell their houses if they put them on the market. This needs to be dealt with at an early stage.