Bernard Durkan (Kildare North, Fine Gael)
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234. To ask the Minister for Environment, Community and Local Government the cost to date of remediating unauthorised or illegal dumping at the various identified locations; the extent to which provisions are in place to prevent any recurrences; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [38820/15]

Alan Kelly (Tipperary North, Labour)
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In April 2005, the European Court of Justice ruled, in case C-494/01, 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 against or raised with Ireland by the European Commission were subsumed under the case and were therefore part of a broader response which was required by Ireland to bring finality to the case. This response has been delivered successfully leading to the recent closure of the case by the European Commission. Remediation of the C-494/01 case sites was a requirement for the recent closure of the infringement proceedings. Accordingly, several legacy licensed and unlicensed landfill sites have required remediation since the judgment and some others that have arisen in the interim which must be remediated over the course of the next few years for environmental, economic and reputational reasons.

My Department’s total expenditure to end 2014 on landfill remediation is €71 million with a further allocation of €8.5 million in Exchequer funding for 2015. A significant proportion of this amount will go towards the remediation of the illegal landfill at Kerdiffstown, County Kildare.

To prevent future recurrence of illegal dumping activities, my Department has introduced a series of measures in recent years that have improved and modernised Ireland’s waste infrastructure and services. These include the centralisation of the waste collection permitting system and trans-frontier waste shipment into single local authorities, the establishment of the Office for Environmental Enforcement (OEE) within the EPA, and the provision of dedicated funding from the Environment Fund for enforcement staff within local authorities.

These reforms have been key to strengthening the Government’s efforts to combat illegal dumping activity. In addition, Cork County Council, Dublin City Council and Leitrim and Donegal County Councils (jointly) were recently announced as the new Waste Enforcement Regional Lead Authorities. They will be tasked with driving further performance improvements by individual local authorities in carrying out their waste enforcement functions and with ensuring consistency between local authorities. Their work will be overseen by a National Steering Committee that will involve other regulatory bodies with a link to waste crime, including the Office of the Revenue Commissioners and An Garda Siochána.