Clare County Council confirmed yesterday it is to seek a High Court injunction tomorrow to try to remove protesters from the entrance to a site described as the most suitable for the county's central landfill dump.
Residents of Inagh village mounted a picket at Ballyduff Beg last Friday, preventing council officials and machinery from gaining access to carry out an environmental impact study (EIS). Fehily, Timoney and Co, consultants, selected the site from 84 sites considered. The council wants six named people to be restrained from preventing the council entering the lands.
One of the six, the spokeswoman for the Inagh Anti-Landfill Action Group, Ms Perry Long, yesterday described the council's action as "bully-boy tactics".
Ms Long said the site was unsuitable as many houses were close to the site; there was extreme risk of pollution; and the roads were inadequate. Yesterday the council chairman, Mr P.J. Kelly (FF), said that after seeking legal advice a special council meeting next Wednesday would debate a motion under Section 4 of the City and County Managers' Act, 1955.
The motion requests the county manager, Mr Willie Moloney, not to further investigate the site until the councillors have had the opportunity to visit all 20 short-listed sites in Clare and it is proved that no other site is suitable.
Mr James Breen (FF), who is tabling the Section 4 motion, said it was an exercise in democracy. He said the proposed location was unsuitable due to the high number of houses close by. If the motion was successful, the 32 councillors would have to visit sites.
This would put the council under serious pressure to identify a new site for the county's central landfill site before its landfill dump at Doora outside Ennis was closed in June 2001, as ordered by the High Court last December.
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