Wicklow Council may face mega-millions bill for clean-up

WICKLOW County Council could face a bill for hundreds of millions of euro to clean up illegal dumps in the county.

The Green Party has called on the Minister for the Environment Martin Cullen to provide emergency funding for the Council to assist its investigations of the dumps.

Wicklow County Manager Edward Sheehy requested funds to help investigate the dumping back in May, but Environment Minister Cullen’s department hasn’t replied.

Green Party Council member Deirdre de Burca said the council’s director for environmental services, Michael Nicholson, told her a detailed request for additional resources had been ignored.

The call for funds came amid reports of another illegal superdump in Wicklow. The County Council last night refused to confirm the existence of the dump, despite telling its own councillors on Monday that a site was being investigated.

But sources say that it certainly exists and is further proof that a well organised cartel of rogue skip owners is operating throughout Wicklow.

“We have no evidence to support the allegations made,” the council said in a statement, referring to the claim that another dump had been found at Dillonsdown, near Blessington.

The statement added: “As part of the Council’s ongoing search programme for illegal landfill sites, some preliminary investigations have taken place on sites at Dillonsdown and a full investigation will be carried out in the coming weeks.” It insisted that nothing definitive had been found.

However, early indications suggest it could be the largest find in the country so far, eclipsing even the notorious Whitestown dump in the west of Wicklow where over 300,000 tonnes of waste were uncovered.

The first dump to be uncovered was the Coolnamadra site near Donard which contained 8,000 tonnes of waste, 400 tonnes of which was described as hazardous and included hospital waste like needles, bloody tubing and soiled bedpans.

In August the High Court ordered a landowner and a waste disposal company involved in the illegal dumping to clean-up the site at a cost of €20 million. The action was taken by Wicklow County Council and was only the beginning as many more cases are pending.