Written answers

Tuesday, 31 March 2015

Department of Environment, Community and Local Government

Fuel Laundering

Photo of Patrick O'DonovanPatrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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658. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will provide details in tabular form, by year and by local authority, of the amounts allocated by his Department to councils since 2011, towards the cost of cleaning up residue from illegal diesel laundering; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13182/15]

Photo of Patrick O'DonovanPatrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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659. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if his Department will provide details which have been communicated to it by the relevant statutory agencies of water courses, including streams, rivers and drains, which have been polluted by matter from the illegal laundering of diesel since 2011; if he will name which of these water courses provide all or part of the drinking water supply; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13184/15]

Photo of Patrick O'DonovanPatrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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660. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he will provide details of correspondence he has received from environment authorities in Northern Ireland since 2011, relating to the contamination and pollution of water courses that rise in or flow through Northern Ireland, from processes connected to the illegal laundering of diesel, and which also flow through this jurisdiction; if any of the water courses in question are part of the drinking water supply in communities in this jurisdiction; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13185/15]

Photo of Patrick O'DonovanPatrick O'Donovan (Limerick, Fine Gael)
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662. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government if he has evidence to suggest that aquifers and water courses in this jurisdiction have been contaminated by the illegal laundering of diesel in Northern Ireland; if he has raised concerns with his counterparts in Northern Ireland and in the United Kingdom; his views that the authorities in Northern Ireland and the United Kingdom are treating this issue with appropriate seriousness; if consideration has been given to a complaint to the European Union authorities on the issue; if further consideration has been given to legal action against the relevant agencies to recover the clean-up costs in this jurisdiction; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [13201/15]

Photo of Alan KellyAlan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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I propose to take Questions Nos. 658 to 660, inclusive, and 662 together.

Enforcement in relation to illegal diesel laundering activities is primarily a matter for the Revenue Commissioners from the point of view of avoiding loss of revenue to the Exchequer. My Department assists local authorities in carrying out their role as competent authorities under waste legislation, which is to take the necessary measures, on behalf of the State, to ensure that any waste generated and left abandoned by diesel launderers is disposed of without endangering human health and without harming the environment.

Approximately 1,200 incidents of diesel laundering waste dumping have been dealt with by local authorities to date and my Department has up to now reimbursed the costs associated with such disposal on a case by case basis. The majority of the clean-up operations have taken place in Louth and Monaghan with 596 and 509 sites, respectively. Similar clean-up operations have also been carried out in Counties Cavan, Donegal, Offaly, Meath and Waterford.

Details of the significant amounts provided by my Department from the Environment Fund since 2011 on a per county basis are set out in the following table:

Year Louth County Council Monaghan County Council Offaly County Council Cavan County Council Donegal County Council Total
2011 €939,315 €89,588 N/A N/A N/A €1,028,903
2012 €1,452,267 €347,350 N/A €23,458 N/A €1,823,075
2013 €693,048 €150,946 N/A N/A €40,753 €884,747
2014 €706,159 €601,244 N/A N/A N/A €1,307,403
2015 Nil to date Nil to date Nil to date Nil to date Nil to date Nil to date
Total €3,790,789 €1,189,128 €0 €23,458 €40,753 €5,044,128
There is strong and active co-operation on this and other waste management issues between the relevant enforcement authorities on both sides of the Border, involving An Garda Síochána, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and other enforcement agencies. Given the likely origin of at least some of the material from Northern Ireland, there is a clear need to ensure that efforts to tackle the issue and support remediation measures have full cross border support. My own Department, as part of on-going cooperation on repatriation of illegally deposited waste in Northern Ireland, has held discussions with the Northern Ireland authorities on the need to develop a mechanism for dealing with waste from cross-border diesel washings which would be factored into the overall discussions on waste repatriation. These discussions are on-going.

In relation to the pollution of water courses, the primary responsibility for ensuring prevention of water pollution rests with local authorities, which are in turn supervised by the Environmental Protection Agency for this purpose. The Local Government (Water Pollution) Acts carry a general prohibition on the entry of any polluting matter to waters. Any persons causing or permitting polluting matter to enter waters is liable on conviction on indictment, to a fine not exceeding €15,000,000 or imprisonment for a term not exceeding 5 years, or both.

Recent media reports have alleged pollution discharges to waters in Northern Ireland that feed into the River Fane system, which is the source of the drinking water supply for Dundalk. It is the responsibility of Irish Water to assess the risk of contamination to public water drinking sources and to monitor any such risks to ensure that it provides safe and secure drinking to its customers. Following on from an EPA audit of the Cavanhill water treatment plant, Irish Water has confirmed that the necessary technical steps have been taken to protect the plant and the drinking water supply from the potential entry of pollutants including hydrocarbons.

Monaghan County Council, consistent with its environmental monitoring obligations under the Local Government (Water Pollution) Acts, has undertaken site-specific water quality monitoring and results indicate that water quality in the Fane River at the three sampled locations is not contaminated with hydrocarbons. The Council intends to continue a comprehensive monitoring programme in the area.

As indicated previously, I have written to my counterpart in the Northern Ireland Executive, Minister Mark Durkan, to highlight again the problems being faced by border counties exposed to the consequences of environmental crime and I have signalled to him that this is an issue that I will be raising at the next meeting of the North South Ministerial Council in May. The Council meets in the Environment Sector in order to make decisions on common policies and approaches in a cross-border context in areas such as environmental protection, pollution, water quality management and waste management and this is, I believe, the most appropriate forum to address this serious issue from a waste and water quality perspective.

The illegal deposition of waste material arising from diesel laundering activities presents the local authorities with major difficulties as the task of cleaning up the material needs to be dealt with to avoid threats to the environment. The laundering process requires the use of chemicals such as sulphuric acid and bleaching agents and results in a waste by-product, a tar-like chemical compound or sludge, with significant potential for environmental pollution, particularly in relation to watercourses.

I believe that a complete solution to this problem must necessarily involve effective and co-ordinated enforcement of the law from both a revenue and waste management perspective. In that context, my Department continues to liaise with representatives of the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, the local authorities concerned and the EPA’s Office of Environmental Enforcement to seek to identify more effective enforcement solutions and these engagements will continue. This multi-agency approach whereby all of the agencies, working within their particular remit, bring their particular skills, expertise and powers to the task at hand represents the best approach to tackling such irresponsible and dangerous environmental crime.

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