These days, the woodland floor is greening over with the shoots of ransoms and bluebells pushing through the leaf mould, writes Damien Enright. The trees are full of bird song and, on bright days, the paths are dappled with sunlight.

A financial hole of debt of over €22m, out of which one of the biggest pig farmers in the country would never escape, was presented by the defence as a background factor to the case which saw him jailed yesterday for 18 months for animal cruelty.

Residents ‘stressed’ by smell of vomit coming from recycling plant

Demonstrations by local residents living near the Country Clean recycling plant in Churchfield call into question the effectiveness of the planning department of Cork City Council and also the Environment Protection Agency.

Having failed to achieve consensus on climate change policies in Copenhagen in 2009, the UN is set to try again, writes Michael Jacobs

A planning application to transform the State’s largest toxic waste dump into vast public parkland as part of a €40m clean-up is due to be lodged within weeks.

THE debate about the registration and inspection of septic tanks needs to move to a wider discussion about the delivery of services to rural dwellers.

An underground fire is raging at a controversial landfill in Co Kildare.

ALMOST one third of the food that people buy ends up in the bin, costing the average household up to €1,000 a year.

RESIDENTS who live near an ESB power station had their houses and cars covered in an ash residue.

A NATIONAL anti-litter initiative called The Countryside is Watching has been launched by the Irish Farmers Association and the farm plastic recycling organisation, Irish Farm Films Producers Group, which have a combined membership of 120,000 farmers and rural dwellers.

THE 2020 Strategy Committee for agri-food, forestry and fisheries is drawn from senior experts and participants in all aspects of the sector.

CLARE County Council faces a potential €500,000 fine for allowing water untreated for the cryptosporidium bug into the Ennis public water system last year.

IN the old mining town of Prestea, the signs and impact of large scale mining are evident.

FLASH floods, prolonged heatwaves, severe droughts and warmer winters — that’s what climate change experts have forecast for Ireland in the coming decades.

The Department of Agriculture has said the company in Co Carlow at the centre of the pork scare did not use proper oil in its machinery.

A SINGLE state laboratory to centralise the farming-related work currently conducted by myriad other offices is being proposed by Fine Gael.

PLANS to build a new waste facility on a 12-acre site along the main Tralee/Killarney road are running into opposition.

ONE of the most dangerous pollutants in the air, which contributes to asthma and other respiratory problems, must be reduced by a fifth by 2020, under legislation agreed by the European Union.

THOUSANDS of homes and farms in Co Limerick, which had been on boil water warnings, have a safe, secure supply following the completion of remedial works.

GREAT news for Courtmacsherry Bay.

ILLEGAL backyard burning has become widespread across the south-west since the introduction of pay-by-weight bin charges, a major new report has found.

THE Aughinish Alumina plant is facing a new EU pollution probe following complaints by local farmers.

PIG farmers are unhappy with meat processors over the prices they are paying them for supplies.

The Environment Protection Agency Waste Report for 2004, which was published yesterday, provides some encouraging figures.

THE giant Aughinish Alumina (AAL) plant on the Shannon Estuary had an unauthorised arrangement with an official of the Shannon Regional Fisheries permitting the company not to report certain breaches of its pollution control licence.

ENVIRONMENT Minister Micheál Martin’s lack of concern at the doubling of dioxin levels in Ringaskiddy is shocking.

THE Environment Protection Agency’s (EPA) deputy director said last night that management at a pharmaceutical plant were wrong to classify a 250-tonne spillage of caustic soda into the sea as a non-urgent incident.

THE gravity of the spillage of 60,000 gallons of 14pH caustic soda into Monkstown Bay in Cork three hours before high water around midnight on Saturday July 2/Sunday July 3 appears to have escaped the notice of the ADM company and in particular the Environment Protection Agency (EPA), under whose remit the overall responsibility for pollution in the harbour area and waters rests.

THE loss of flower-rich meadows and nesting sites along hedgerows is posing a threat to the bumblebee, a conference in Dublin heard yesterday.

The Government has allocated extra funding to clamp down on illegal waste dumping, it emerged today.

ENVIRONMENT Minister Dick Roche last night defended the decision by the Environment Protection Agency to grant licences to two incinerators in Cork and Meath.

WEDNESDAY of last week was a sad day for Irish democracy, not to mention citizens’ health and their environment as a result of the EPA granting a licence to Indaver to build incinerators at Ringaskiddy, Co Cork, and Duleek, Co Meath.

MEMBERS of Cork’s leading anti-incineration group were barred from going into Leinster House for lunch yesterday after protesting outside Dáil Éireann on Kildare Street in Dublin.

OUTRAGED community groups will seek an oral hearing into yesterday’s decision by the Environment Protection Agency to grant a draft licence to Indaver (Ireland) for waste incineration plants in Cork and Meath.

THE Government is to crack down on illegal dumping on both sides of the Border.

DAN BUCKLEY’S article entitled ‘Stop burying waste or waste will bury us’ (Irish Examiner, Dec 1) correctly acknowledges the scale of the protests against the bin tax.

ANGRY residents in a Co Limerick area plagued by environmental scares yesterday demanded a breakdown of the money spent investigating the problem.

A HEALTH board faces the threat of prosecution and a hefty fine following the discovery of several sackfuls of waste in a field near one of its clinics.