Meath Co Council refused planning permission for a crèche for nine children at Carranstown one month before it granted permission to Indaver Ireland for a waste-management facility, including an incinerator, 1km away, an oral hearing heard yesterday.
Mr Declan Keegan of Carranstown Residents' Group provoked laughter from the public audience when he said the council's reasons for refusal were that the crèche would generate traffic and "the noise generated would establish a very undesirable precedent."
Meath Co Council official Mr Michael Killeen said there were other reasons as well, including that it would be a "haphazard non-integrated background development".
Mr Keegan said the council one month later granted planning permission for the Indaver development, which will produce an additional 100,000 vehicles a year on the same road that passes the house where the crèche was to be built.
The inspector hearing objections to the incinerator, Mr James Carroll, asked for a copy of the planning permission refusal. Mr Carroll also heard that two sisters living in Dublin who do not have any family in the area own the 25 hectares earmarked for the site.
Indaver proposes to incinerate 150,000 tonnes of waste a year at the €80 million facility, which, the council stipulated, must only accept waste from the north-east region; this condition is also part of the oral hearing, as it has been appealed by the company.
The council was asked how it intended to police its stipulation that the waste come from the north-east counties of Louth, Meath, Cavan and Monaghan. Mr Killeen said all waste would have to be accompanied by a certificate saying where it originated.
Cross-examined by East Meath Dairy Farmers, he said Indaver already had selected the site at Carranstown before it met the council and the council did not look at any alternatives sites in or outside the county but assessed the application submitted to it.
Mr John Ahern, general manager of Indaver Ireland, said Carranstown was chosen as it was the centre of gravity of waste produced in the region.
He used a Microsoft AutoRoute package to arrive at Drogheda and its environs as the most suitable town for the facility, out of 20 towns with a population of more than 1,000.