Catherine Murphy (Kildare North, Independent)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

533. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the costs to the Exchequer arising from the State's obligation to enforce the decision of the European Court of Justice of the European Union on 26 April 2005 in case C 494/01, Commission v. Ireland, in the matter of the waste directive, and the associated programme of measures; his plans to fully transpose the landfill directive to ensure that waste processing and transit licences may only be issued to entities where there is a guarantee of financial security in place; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [27079/15]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
Link to this: Individually | In context | Oireachtas source

In April 2005 the European Court of Justice ruled, in case C494/01, that Ireland had infringed the Waste Framework Directive under various articles of that directive. The response of the Irish authorities to the case has two main elements - a general response addressing the structural or administrative deficiencies highlighted by the ECJ and, secondly, a response to the site specific cases themselves. In addition, certain other complaints or issues which had been taken or raised by the European Commission against or with Ireland (such as unregulated end of life vehicles and other illegal sites or orphan sites such as the former Irish Ispat site at Haulbowline, Co. Cork) were subsumed under the case and are therefore part of an enlarged response which is required by Ireland to bring finality to the case.

Remediation of the ECJ494 case sites is a requirement of the resolution of the infringement proceedings. Accordingly, there are several legacy licensed and unlicensed landfill sites that have required remediation since the judgment and some others that have arisen in the interim which must be remediated in the course of the next few years for environmental, reputational and economic reasons.

Full details of the programme of measures which Ireland has agreed to deliver to ensure full compliance with the judgment, including the costs incurred to December 2014 by the State, are set out in a detailed document available on my Department’s website atwww.environ.ie/en/Publications/Environment/Waste/FileDownLoad,30458,en.pdf.