€125,000 paid to ESRI for report on incinerator

DUBLIN CITY Council paid almost €125,000 for the Economic and Social Research Institute report which criticises Minister for the Environment John Gormley’s policies on incineration, it has emerged.

Dublin city manager John Tierney told an Oireachtas environment committee that the council had paid the ESRI €103,000 plus VAT for the report published yesterday, which found “no underlying rationale” for Mr Gormley’s position on incineration and said the international review of waste policy he commissioned was “severely flawed”.

However, Mr Tierney also told the committee that the Department of the Environment had provided €7.5 million towards the cost of the Poolbeg incinerator, which is opposed by Mr Gormley, and that the council was going ahead with the incinerator because of, not despite, Government waste management policy.

Mr Tierney and the developers of the 600,000-tonne incinerator, Covanta, attended the committee yesterday following an invitation made two weeks ago, but their attendance coincided with the publication of the ESRI report.

Their attendance also came on a day where Mr Gormley accused the council and Covanta of trying to control national waste policy and criticised the ESRI for lowering its standards by allowing itself to be used by the council for its own ends.

"I do regret that they have been drawn into what is clearly a public relations campaign on behalf of Dublin City Council and Covanta and it is no coincidence that the report was released today and it is simply to undermine Government waste policy," Mr Gormley told RTÉ's News at Oneyesterday.

“Certainly in my time in public life, I’ve never come across anything like this where ESRI is used in that way and I think they departed from their normal standards in that regard,” he said.

Addressing the committee just over an hour after Mr Gormley’s comments, Mr Tierney said the ESRI’s report had been independent and there was no motivation to undermine or direct national waste policy. “We are aware that Government decides waste policy . . . but it seems that any contrary view to the international waste review is taken to be about undermining waste policy. That’s a strange supposition in a democracy.”

There had been no change to waste management policy since Mr Gormley took office, Mr Tierney said.

He said the council had legal advice in relation to this matter and had made Mr Gormley aware of that advice.

“We are implementing Government policy as it stands . . . I absolutely stand over the procedures we have gone through.” The evidence that the project was in line with Government policy was clear in that the Department of the Environment had allocated €7.5 million, with the support of the EU Cohesion Fund, for the procurement of the facility.

The final costs to the State of the incinerator were not yet known, Mr Tierney said. However, he said site acquisition had cost €34 million and €25.5 million had been paid to consultants acting on behalf of the council.

The “put or pay” clause which requires the council to provide 320,000 tonnes of waste to the incinerator or pay a penalty would cost the State €18 million, Mr Gormley has said. However, Mr Tierney said this clause only kicks in if Covanta cannot source sufficient waste for the incinerator.

Scott Whitney, president of Covanta Europe, said the company was confident there would be enough waste in Dublin for the plant. However, he confirmed Covanta was “looking for other waste streams” outside the Dublin region. He said he was not in a position to confirm whether the company was involved in tendering for waste in the southeast region which would then be processed at the Poolbeg plant. At a press briefing earlier Mr Whitney defended the company’s plans to provide capacity for treating 600,000 tonnes of municipal waste annually. He said he was confident there was sufficient waste available in Dublin to fuel the incinerator, which is known as a waste-to-energy plant.

Mr Whitney said he appreciated there were “concerns about the project” as evidenced by a small group of protesters outside the Westbury Hotel.

“These projects are always controversial,” he said, “and this one has been at the forefront of public attention”.