Relations worsen in dispute over Poolbeg incinerator

RELATIONS between Dublin City Council and Environment Minister John Gormley over the planned Poolbeg incinerator have worsened as a defiant city manager said the plant was in line with Government policy.

Dublin City manager John Tierney said a report it commissioned from the ESRI had found the minister’s own international review was flawed and that Mr Gormley’s stance against the incinerator lacked a coherent or compelling reason.

However, Mr Gormley said he decided national waste policy and not the city council and said the ESRI had displayed economic illiteracy in its report and should not have got involved in a political dispute.

The minister said the incinerator cannot go ahead.

Mr Tierney told the Oireachtas Committee on the Environment that the four Dublin local authorities had merely followed Government policy and the incinerator was the best policy it could have pursued.

“I stand over the contract and the procedure that we used throughout right from 2001, when the process started, up to when the contract was signed in 2007,” he said.

He defended the decision to opt for a 600,000 tonne incinerator, the scale of which has been attacked by Mr Gormley.

Mr Tierney said “under-forecasting and under-funding had been bedeviled Irish planning for years” and planning for future growth was prudent. The European president of Covanta, the company which is building and will manage the plant, Scott Whitney said it saw no reason why enough waste would not be generated in Dublin to supply the plant.

However, Mr Whitney confirmed the company was prepared to go outside the Dublin region to seek waste to meet its targets.

Covanta has applied to take waste from the south east region and he said it would be irresponsible of the company not to be monitoring the market for opportunities.

He told Deputy Ciarán Lynch that if in future it could look to import waste from abroad to meet its 600,000 tonne target.

Mr Tierney said this would only be possible if the law changed.

He said he had no desire to be in conflict with Mr Gormley and has told the minister the negative consequences, including legal difficulties, if it broke from the contract now.