Company fined for illegal waste recovery

A DIRECTOR of Dublin waste firm A1 Waste has been fined €10,000 at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court on charges relating to recovery of waste without a licence, at Whitestown in Co Wicklow.

Anthony Dean (56), Woodhaven, Milltown, Dublin, a director of Dean Waste, trading as A1 Waste, pleaded guilty in February, after a nolle prosequi was entered on an earlier charge of disposing of waste in a manner likely to lead to environmental pollution.

The court was told the unauthorised recovery of “inert material” took place at a central section of the 47-acre Whitestown Quarry, near Baltinglass, between January 1st and May 1st in 1998.

Reviewing the evidence in the case at Dean’s sentence hearing yesterday, Judge Desmond Hogan said it was accepted that material transported to the site by A1 Waste was inert material, “not hospital waste”.

The judge also recalled that Dean had initially been indicted on a charge of disposing of waste without a licence and in a manner likely to cause environmental pollution. But on the third day of the trial last February, Dean had pleaded guilty to the charge of recovery without a licence, which, although it carried similar penalties was “sometimes regarded as a lesser offence”.

The judge said he would “make no adverse finding” against Dean in relation to entering a guilty plea on the third day, “as a substituted charge was preferred against the defendant on the third day, and he couldn’t have pleaded to the count before that.”

Counsel for the Director of Public Prosecutions Michael Bowman, with Eanna Mulloy SC, confirmed the State had entered a nolle prosequi to the initial charge. The judge told Mr Dean’s counsel Shane Murphy SC that in deciding sentence he had taken into account that in the four months from January 1998, during which waste was being taken to Whitestown by A1 Waste, Wicklow County Council was also transporting its own material to Whitestown, and had a representative on the gate “who could direct where waste was to be deposited”.

The judge said the material brought by A1 Waste “was not noxious material as may have been originally thought”. He noted that while A1 Waste had a licence for the removal of hospital waste, the material brought to Whitestown had been inert.

“It was builders’ waste, if I may put it like that,” said the judge.

Mr Murphy, for Dean, told the judge “this turned out to be a very different type of prosecution than the type of prosecution that opened”. He recalled the material transported by A1 Waste was inert and that the period referred to – January 1st to May 1st – was during the early days of new regulations regarding waste management.

The judge said he wanted to stress the “exceptional circumstances” of the case and added that he had given credit for the plea from Dean “when an amended indictment was put to him”. He gave Dean two months to pay.