Dublin City Council will have responsibility for the enforcement of new regulations to prevent the illegal shipment of waste abroad.
Minister for the Environment John Gormley yesterday announced the new measures, and allocated €500,000 to Dublin City Council to establish a national office to implement and enforce the new rules. He said this would streamline the current system whereby each local authority is responsible for policing the export of waste abroad from its own council area.
Labour's environment spokesman Eamon Gilmore questioned the decision to allocate responsibility to Dublin City Council and said the Greens in opposition had promised to introduce a national waste authority.
Mr Gilmore said it was "unusual that a national function would be conferred on an individual local authority. What the Greens promised before the election was a national authority and I would question whether sufficient resources have been given. After all you can't do much with €500,000 these days."
The rules aim to prevent waste from being illegally shipped abroad and to assist firms engaged in legitimate waste export activities.
They include a requirement that waste be returned to Ireland if found to have been shipped abroad illegally. The local Irish firm would have to pay the full cost of such a decision.
"At present 83 per cent of the waste in Ireland collected for recycling or recovery is exported abroad," Mr Gormley said.
"This includes almost all cardboard, paper and plastic collected at our recycling facilities around the country. The movement of such large volumes of waste needs to be properly policed and controlled to prevent against illegal waste activity."
The EU-instigated regulations, which come into effect tomorrow, are known as the transfrontier shipment rules and deal principally with the shipment of both hazardous and non-hazardous waste. They include notification rules to protect the environment when such waste is moved to other countries.
Mr Gormley said he had decided to give responsibility for the enforcement of the new regulations to a single authority, Dublin City Council, to ensure the new rules are enforced effectively and efficiently.
