Haulbowline dump - Decision is welcome but long overdue

YESTERDAY’S announcement that the Government has set a two-and-a-half year deadline to clean up the toxic dump at Haulbowline in Cork Harbour must be welcomed.

That welcome can be a reasonably confident one as a budget of €40 million has been set aside for the long-overdue containment of an estimated 500,000 tonnes of waste, some of it toxic.

However, that welcome cannot dispel the great frustration that it has taken so very long to do what should have been done years ago. Neither can it dispel the sad realisation that the very existence of the dump points, once again, to regulatory failure on a grand scale.