Lifeless wildlife, dead rivers thick with toxic effluent, air foggy with noise and odour and mile-high smoky mountains of rubbish is what springs to mind when industry abuses the environment.
However, thanks to the licensing and control of large industries with significant pollution potential by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Ireland, to a large extent, has been spared from such an end.
This is done through a system of integrated pollution control licensing, explains Dr Padraic Larkin, EPA director of the environmental monitoring and laboratory services division. There are about 500 licences covering sectors such as the chemical sector, the energy sector, mining, the intensive agriculture sector, the food and food processing sectors, and the incineration of hazardous waste.
According to Dr Larkin "they all come under the exact same regime, they all get one single permit with more or less conditions attached to it". However, these can vary significantly, according to industry and can be quite complex documents.
"We operate a very strict enforcement regime, which is tiered, weighted according to the non-compliance," he says.
If there are minor non-compliances, companies are served with an administrative notice of non-compliance, which allows them a set time to meet their obligations.
If it's more serious, they can be issued with a notice telling them to get the work done in a set time or take them to court and have them fined or sent to jail. Ultimately the EPA can go to the High Court and close them down immediately. If it is very serious, the penalties are severe; a fine of up to £10 million (€12.7 million) or up to two years in jail.
This does not stop some industries from overstepping the mark, though. "We issue notices of non-compliance all the time," says Dr Larkin. The EPA has won court cases successfully against companies, but no business has ever been closed immediately with a High Court injunction. However, says Dr Larkin, "we've been close to it once or twice".
Dr Larkin believes that for industry the situation has changed and improved since the EPA has controlled licensing. Its requirement to have an environmental management system as part of the licence is unique to Ireland and "it is having a significant effect on waste elimination at source".
IBEC also has a role to play in helping businesses protect the environment. Its environment unit advises companies on legislation and policy and arranges training.
According to Dr Mary Kelly, head of the environment unit in IBEC, it is really involved in the development of environmental policy and interacts with the EPA, Government departments, and Brussels "to look forward to what is coming down the tracks for business and what the implications are, to try and have a business friendly legislation". IBEC is far from anti-environmental protection; in fact it is at the forefront in trying to get companies to take the environment seriously, to look at it as a strategic business issue.
According to Dr Kelly "most companies realise that the environment is a key strategic issue for them and IBEC encourages them to be proactive and look at future developments in terms of environmental policy, to build it into business planning".
According to the EPA's Millennium Report published last April, the largest amounts of non-agricultural waste generated in 1998 were in manufacturing (4.9 million tonnes), in mining and quarrying (3.5 million tonnes), in construction and demolition (2.7 million tonnes) and in the municipal sector (2.1 million tonnes).
However, some things can improve, and it found that the most striking trend in waste recovery has been in the manufacturing sector. Reported recovery increased from 31 per cent in 1995 to 51 per cent in 1998, while the overall recovery rate for packaging waste was 14.8 per cent.
Although IDA Ireland, which is responsible for attracting industry to Ireland, does not have a direct role to play in environmental policy, it supports the EPA.
The contracts between all companies grant-aided by the authority and the IDA obliges them to meet all the conditions, terms and operating principle established by the planning authorities and the EPA.
"If they break any of those in any shape, form or way, they immediately come under threat of grant withdrawal," explains Mr Colm Donlon, IDA Ireland spokesman. If a company is found to be constantly guilty of breach of the environmental regulations, there would be an automatic process started by IDA and grants would be withdrawn.
There have been a number of close shaves, but since the regulations have tightened up so much, a company with a poorly managed environmental policy would suffer poor market disadvantages, says Mr Donlon.
"Therefore their credibility would be at stake and they don't tend to go the wrong way about it and they don't want to go the wrong way about it."
Overall, the EPA's Millennium Report indicated that achieving eco-efficiency is the major challenge facing Ireland in particular because of its exceptional economic growth.
According to the report the combination of strong growth and more stringent environmental targets greatly magnifies the challenge facing public authorities and the strategic economic sectors in Ireland. According to Dr Larkin, the biggest environmental problem in Ireland is "significant odour pollution from many of the rendering sectors, that's probably the one that is causing the most heartache to everyone including ourselves."
