EPA denies incinerator health risks

THE head of the country's environmental watchdog has rubbished claims that the Government's health adviser asked it not to licence two incinerators in the absence of a health impact study.

Speaking yesterday on RTÉ's This Week programme, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) director Pádraig Larkin said its inspector's report clearly outlined how public health is addressed in the licensing process.

When asked if anti-incineration campaigner Mary O'Leary was right in saying the EPA had ignored the Government's own health adviser, Mr Larkin replied: "No, she is not right, and if you read in fact the inspector's report of Dr Jonathan Durham, who made a very substantial report on the oral hearing, you will see argued very cogently there the issue of public health and how it's dealt with in the licensing process."

Ms O'Leary, chairperson of the Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment (CHASE), made the claim last week after the EPA granted a licence to Belgian incineration company Indaver to operate commercial waste incinerators at Ringaskiddy in Co Cork, and Carranstown, near Duleek in Co Meath. A two-month period during which a judicial review may be sought has now begun.

Yesterday, Mr Larkin said they had applied European standards for emissions, laid down in the EU Directive on the Incineration of Waste, before granting the controversial licences.

He said the EPA was satisfied the facilities "can be operated without adversely affecting the environment and without adversely affecting human health".

Mr Larkin said cleaning devices would "take out all the nasty materials like heavy metals, dioxins and gases" before emission-to-air and that if anything went wrong, the licence required Indaver to stop feeding waste into the fire. When asked if it was possible that the damage would be done by then, he said: "There's nothing that's going to dramatically affect somebody, if there's an emission, if there's even a breach of the licence, it would not dramatically affect somebody, it's not going to kill anybody or injure anybody."

But the Meath-based No Incineration Alliance (NIA) restated its concerns for public health and said it was pinning its hopes to block the project on a Supreme Court case against planning permission for the Meath plant. A similar case against the Cork facility is currently before the High Court.