Council to invite report authors for Q&A session

CORK county manager Martin Riordan is to ask the consultants who prepared the Haulbowline report to meet councillors for a question and answer session as they remain unconvinced by its claim there is no threat to the health of people living near the toxic dump.

Mr Riordan said he would seek the meeting after a number of county councillors said they were not convinced by White, Young & Green’s assessment of the potential danger of the toxic dump in Cork harbour.

The county manager added that the council was also of the view that a baseline health study must still be carried out amongst the population of the harbour.

He made his comments yesterday after the findings of the report were raised by Councillor John Mulvihill.

The Labour party councillor accused Environment Minister John Gormley of deliberately issuing the report on the back of the crisis in the pig industry so it wouldn’t get the prominence it deserved.

Mr Mulvihill said Chromium 6 contamination of shellfish in the harbour was a very serious issue and he described the consultants’ report as “a fob-off”.

“Only the eastern end of the site was tested. What about the rest of the site. There has never been any proper control over monitoring there,” the councillor said. He repeated that the rate of cancer in Cobh was 46% higher than anywhere else in Ireland.

Cllr Noel Collins (Ind) said he also regarded the report as “a whitewash”.

“People living in the harbour are sitting next to one of the biggest toxic dumps in the world. I’ve absolutely no faith in Gormley,” Cllr Martin Hallinan (SF) said.

FG’s Cllr Tim Lombard questioned why big levels of the highly carcinogenic Chromium 6 didn’t present a problem? “This can get into the food chain. We are sitting on a potentially enormous timebomb,” he said.

The county manager said it was important to resolve the issue as plans to turn the harbour into a tourist site — with the development of Spike Island as a heritage centre — depended on it.

“The longer Haulbowline [the toxic waste site] is there the longer harbour redevelopment will be held up,” Mr Riordan said.

Mr Mulvihill wanted the council to employ independent consultants to assess the potential long-term damage. “There cannot be a price on people’s health,” he said.

A second report on the potential threat has been compiled by a peer group of experts in Britain. That has yet to be published.

Mr Riordan urged councillors to wait for the peer group report before deciding on whether they want to carry out their own independent analysis.