Connect: 'It's a Ceausescu-style project. It will bring prestige to the designers but will certainly backfire on the local community if allowed to go ahead," said Green Party leader Trevor Sargent of the proposed giant sewage treatment plant for Portrane in north Co Dublin. "It's an importation facility to raise money for Fingal County Council," he added. "Just like Sellafield, it will import waste for a fee."
"Ceausescu", "Sellafield", even "Portrane" are charged words. Each generates a frisson of unease: Ceausescu remains synonymous with tyrannical rule; Sellafield is a seemingly dodgy nuclear reprocessing plant whose owners have been economical with the truth; Portrane has a huge, "out of sight, out of mind", psychiatric hospital. Sargent's analogies seem fair.
The plan for the giant sewage treatment plant proved controversial at Monday's Fingal County Council meeting. Remember it is envisaged that it should serve the sewage demands of west Dublin - Blanchardstown, Mulhuddart, Lucan, Clondalkin - and parts of east Meath and south Dublin as well as its own hinterland. In time, it is intended that it will deal with the waste of about one million people.
Anyway, as a result of the heated meeting, the public gets a further four weeks to comment on the plans. Originally, plans for the proposed plant were made available for public consultation for less than a month from mid-July, ensuring that few people would be aware of the proposal. Still, despite the extra four weeks, Portrane remains directly in the firing line to receive the unwanted plant.
Fingal county manager John Tierney, understandably keen to raise money for the council, argued strongly in favour of the sewage plant. "It will be a major plant on the coast," he said. "It will serve about 200,000 people to start with, and in time it will cater for about one million people." It was his utter acceptance of such a huge plant on the Fingal coast that was depressing.
It was depressing because there are alternatives. "It is not the only option," said Trevor Sargent, who would favour a number of smaller treatment plants allowing communities to take care of their own waste. "In Canada, communities are very proud of their own individual treatment facilities in each town," he added. Here, the motivation appears to be to dump all on vulnerable sites.
The scene in Fingal's plush new County Hall showed that, within local government, elected councillors, despite their best intentions, are seldom little more than a permanent opposition to unelected officials. Local government was never strong in this State. Legislation in recent decades has castrated it further. It's no wonder people take little interest in local government elections. It's not as though the unelected Tierney is greatly different from his fellow county managers. Such scenes are replicated throughout the State because, of all western European countries, the Republic of Ireland allocates the least powers and responsibilities to elected local government. The important decisions almost always take place away from the council chamber.
So, it's not the Dublin North TDs or Fingal county councillors or even county manager John Tierney and his officials who really want a huge, "Ceausescu-style" sewage works in Portrane. Sure, some of these individuals - the FF TDs, for instance, and the permanent civil service officials charged with carrying out central Government policy - are more compromised than others. But a huge sewage plant, such as that envisaged for Portrane, is essentially a Department of the Environment project.
Minister for the Environment Dick Roche - the man, remember, who wouldn't hear of an incinerator in his own Wicklow constituency - is keen to have a plant dealing with the sewage of a million people built in Portrane, near the Rogerstown Estuary, a bird sanctuary. He's keen, too, to have an incinerator built about 24km (15 miles) away. Meanwhile, the dump at Balleally (on Rogerstown Estuary) has been extended; there's to be a 350-acre "superdump" at Tooman, seven or eight miles from Portrane; and the new "Mountjoy Prison" at Thornton Hall is about five miles away. Thus one small region gets thrashed; it seems the rip-off Republic favours dump-on democracy.
The concentration of political power at ministerial level should be particularly awkward for Fianna Fáil. After all, it advertises itself as "the republican party", but acts in an authoritarian, neo-colonial, indeed semi-imperial style. "The Fingal coast" - Portrane, in other words - has been earmarked for another would-be "out of sight, out of mind" unwanted project to replace its closing hospital.
Building a giant sewage treatment plant there - which on the evidence of Ringsend and Swords is almost guaranteed to stink - shows how even a Fianna Fáil-led Government apes the former colonial power. How far has the party travelled from that embarrassing Charlie Haughey, horsey, ape-the-Brits, squireen stuff? The whiff of republicanism from FF is now considerably less strong than the vile whiff around Ringsend. Still, it will be interesting to watch the PR, spin and media manipulation to have a giant sewage plant built at Portrane. Putting it there allows for the Irish Sea to be used as a discharge option during inevitable breakdowns. "Ceausescu" and especially "Sellafield" seem apter than ever.