Mountain of rubbish must be scaled down

IT is a damning indictment of Ireland’s failure to manage its growing mountain of waste that it required a name-and-shame seminar to elicit news that a three-year-old Brussels directive aimed at cleaning up landfill sites has at long last been signed

Following a threat by the European Commission to take legal action over Ireland's foot-dragging, Environment Minister Martin Cullen announced the directive has finally been transposed into law. Since June, official sites require a licence under the 1999 protocol designed to prevent poorly managed landfills polluting soil and water, creating air emissions and contaminating ground water.

It is heartening to learn the Government is now fully compliant with EU law. But precisely what this means is far from clear. It is one thing to adopt the rules but an entirely different matter to ensure the regulations are implemented.

Few issues are more calculated to raise public anxieties. It is probably fair to attribute the emergence of the NIMBY not in my backyard syndrome to the historic failure of local authorities to put their house in order.

There is no denying management of landfill sites varies radically from county to county and from one dump to the next. Undoubtedly, it was the lacklustre performance of some local authorities that enabled cowboy operators to create a plethora of illegal dumps in some of the most scenic parts of the country.

In recent times, the hallowed image of Wicklow as the Garden of Ireland has been blackened by the shock discovery of dozens of unapproved dumps in the county. It was a damning comment on the sleepy hollow attitude of officialdom that 8,000 tonnes of waste was amassed in one illegal dump before being discovered. Some 400 tonnes of this was hazardous, including material from hospitals such as needles, tubing with blood and soiled bedpans.

In yet another scandal, Ireland is at the centre of a controversy over the export of banned material that ultimately found its way on to farms in Denmark and Holland and thence into the food chain.

Thanks to a seminar in Brussels yesterday, the spotlight is now focused sharply on the enormity of the challenge of resolving this country's waste crisis. Delegates heard that Ireland is cited in five out of 42 legal cases being taken against EU member States.

There is a bitter irony in the fact that the success of the Celtic Tiger economy has added hugely to the waste mountain. While Mr Cullen's signing of the EU directive was a positive initiative, there is a long way to go before he creates a national plan for waste management and treatment.

Moves towards a regional network of incinerators are now mired in controversy. Rejected by local communities, the issue has become a political football. However, the minister's peremptory decision to adopt a one-stop-shop approach, effectively excluding local representatives from the decision-making process, was a bad day for democracy.

Hopefully, yesterday's name-and-shame seminar will convince authorities that a piecemeal approach to waste disposal is not good enough.

There is compelling need for a comprehensive approach to this crisis. Unless Government strategy embraces a greater mix of landfill, recycling and recovery, as well as incineration, it will not win public support.