Treacy Hogan: Gormley all fired-up with pile of excuses
Jerry Dempsey (left) shows Environment Minister John Gormley around Greenstar's new waste facility in Finglas, Co Dublin. Picture: Maxwells
IT'S time for John Gormley to put up, or shut up. For the past three years the Green Environment Minister has constantly belly-ached about the prospect of a big, bad incinerator proposed for Poolbeg in the heart of his Dublin South East constituency.
Type 'incinerator' into Google and a menu of scary horror stories does appear.
Yes, previous generations of incinerators did generate real health fears on the continent. Fair enough, the concerns were fully justified.
But we are now reassured by powers-that-be who claim the latest models pose far less risk.
And even if we oppose incineration, a technology commonplace in the most eco-friendly countries, the alternatives are not so great.
They include burying countless millions of tonnes of the most noxious household rubbish in giant holes in the ground every year.
This, in turn, will leach out into water supplies, posing an environmental time-bomb for generations to come.
But the real kicker in Gormley's long-standing objections to the incinerator is that the facility is a cornerstone of government policy.
This contract was entered into in line with current government waste policy and the Regional Waste Management Plan.
It has full planning permission from An Bord Pleanala, and has a waste licence from the Environmental Protection Agency.
It has permission from the Commission for Energy Regulation to generate energy, and its supply to the grid has been approved by the minister's own department.
The National Development Finance Agency, on behalf of the Department of Finance, has confirmed the deal represents good value to the taxpayer.
The minister is attempting to take Ireland in a different direction than every other EU country that has demonstrated success in minimising landfilling by embracing waste to energy plants.
If this backfires, as many expect it will, Irish householders and businesses will be left footing the bill, possibly running into hundreds of millions of euro, the price of a broken contract.
The minister dismisses the fact that the most environmentally friendly countries in Europe all have extensive networks of incinerators.
Denmark, with its 5.5 million people, has 29 plants that convert waste into electricity and heat.
As far as he is concerned, the Scandinavian countries "do not have best international practice", as he said yesterday. This might have raised a few eyebrows among Green Danes.
And he insists that there won't be enough waste to feed the Poolbeg incinerator, which has a capacity for 600,000 tonnes annually from the Dublin region.
Funny, about 750,000 tonnes are landfilled -- sorry, buried -- in a big hole in the ground, every year. Gormley argues that private waste companies are busy developing new technologies such as mechanical biological treatment that will help reduce the rubbish mountain.
But the elephant in the room is the incinerator, which has been signed, sealed but not delivered.
There was also a time when the Environment Minister would not allow his fingerprints to be found on any major planning project going through the system.
Guess who has the final say on whether or not to grant a foreshore licence for the incinerator, which has been with the Department of the Environment for the past two years? You guessed it: John Gormley.
US Ambassador Dan Rooney has also sought a meeting with the minister about delays in granting a foreshore licence to the US company.
If the Irish Government is unable, or unwilling, to honour its own regulatory systems and allow a project of national importance to proceed, what signal does this send to other US companies considering setting up here?
John Gormley hit out yesterday at the growing practice of householders avoiding proper disposal of their waste by burning it in barrels in their backyard.
Or was that a case of Not In My Backyard -- ie, John Gormley's Ringsend.
Noel Dempsey, now Transport Minister, previously held Gormley's environment portfolio. He was once quizzed about highly charged campaigns against incinerators.
The plain-speaking Meath minister remarked that some of these opponents offered the Paul Daniels solution to the rubbish mountain -- 'Hey presto' and it magically disappears.
- Treacy Hogan
Irish Independent
