State may face €150m clean-up bill

THE State is facing a €150 million bill to clean up the estimated 600,000 tonnes of rubbish illegally dumped in the North.

The North’s Environment and Heritage Service (EHS) said the waste is dumped in 60 sites across the six counties, mainly in the Border areas.

The EHS has started prosecuting the landowners who are allowing their land to be used as a dumping ground. Last month, a second man was sent to prison for the crime.

Samuel Wilson McIlroy of Crumlin was jailed for six months for allowing an estimated 5,000 tonnes of biodegradable household waste to be dumped on a site he owned. Officers began investigating the site in May 2004.

Last June, a Fermanagh farmer and his wife became the first people in the North to be prosecuted for the offence of accepting rubbish from the south.

More than 4,500 tonnes of bio-degradable-type waste was found on their farm outside Garrison and the farmer admitted to being paid up to £8,000 to accept the material, which was believed to have originated from Cork and Wexford.

According to Ann Blacker of the Environment and Heritage Service, the North’s Assets Recovery unit is also pursuing offenders to retrieve any money made by the landowners from the dumpers.

The EHS is working with the Environmental Protection Agency in the Republic to try to trace the identity of the dumpers.

She said a small cache of waste, 150 tonnes, found dumped in Armagh has been traced back to Cork and the local authority has said it will foot the bill while the culprit is traced.