Dáil committee seeks to compel CRH to appear before it
Members of the Environment Committee have unanimously agreed to ask the Dáil to pass a motion to require representatives of the company to appear before it.
The move comes after members of the all-party committee reacted angrily when Roadstone, a subsidiary of CRH, refused to appear at the committee hearing earlier this week.
The company said it would be inappropriate to attend in advance of its appeal against an EPA decision to refuse a waste licence. Roadstone requires the licence to build an engineered landfill for illegally dumped waste, discovered on the company’s lands in Co Wicklow.
Tens of thousands of tonnes of illegal waste have been dumped on lands owned by the company near the Poulaphouca reservoir in Co Wicklow.
Roadstone contacted the committee earlier this week seeking a deferral over fears that a discussion about illegal dumping in Co Wicklow might prejudice or compromise the waste application process.
Yesterday, Green Party environment spokesperson Ciarán Cuffe said he could not understand why an appearance before the committee would have prejudiced the application
“All that the EPA looks at is the facts and that is precisely what the Environment Committee were hoping to get from CRH.
“My impression was that one of Ireland’s biggest companies is adopting an arrogant attitude towards the committee,” he said.
“When the company last appeared (before the committee), it said it knew nothing about it. But the amount of waste discovered was of the order of a lorry load every day.”
Last night a spokesperson for CRH said that it would be happy to appear before the committee once the EPA had issued its final decision.
That would result in a more constructive engagement with the committee, he said.
Roadstone was directed by Wicklow County Council to apply for a waste licence to excavate the material on site, and then sort and recycle it. It also applied for permission to build a landfill for residual waste.
The company has told the EPA that is prepared to remove the residual waste from the site, if the EPA believes that is the best environmental solution.
