A radical "zero waste" management policy and the scrapping of plans for incinerators were promised by Fine Gael leader Mr Michael Noonan yesterday.
Mr Noonan said a "mindset" had developed within Government circles and particularly within the Department of the Environment, which saw incineration as an answer to the present waste management crisis.
This thinking would have to change, he added, and there would have to be a recognition that, with the right leadership, there were viable alternatives.
He said plans for incinerators in the Republic will be scrapped if he becomes Taoiseach after the general election.
"Fine Gael's policy of 'zero waste' management would obviate the need for incinerators and through a carrot and stick approach, would promote the acceptance of re-use and recycling practices."
The environment, and waste management in particular, was one of the critical planks of Fine Gael's programme for government. If the government of the day changed national policy towards incineration, he added, the private sector would follow suit.
Asked what the implications were for existing plans for incinerators, such as the Indaver proposal at Ringaskiddy in Cork Harbour for a €95 million hazardous waste facility, Mr Noonan said the new government would be mindful of legal constraints, but it would be open to it to create a new framework for a different and more comprehensive approach to how our waste was managed. Incineration was not the answer, as far as Fine Gael was concerned.
Ireland, Mr Noonan said, was bottom of the European league table in terms of re-use and recycling and we were in danger of becoming Europe's dirty neighbour.
"The Irish economy has grown but the extra waste volumes which have been created as a result have not been managed and this failure has led to the present crisis. Waste must be managed as an inevitable part of growth if it is not to strangle us. By its failure to manage growth, the Government has allowed a crisis to develop and now its only answers are crisis answers, not solutions that go to the root of the problem," he said.
Under Fine Gael's proposals, a waste commissioner will be appointed to work with a special all-party Oireachtas committee and to report within six months on alternative waste management strategies with the emphasis on waste reduction and environmental protection. The goal of the policy would be "zero waste" management but there would still be residual waste, including some of a hazardous nature. Once the volume of such waste had been reduced and Ireland was seen to be actively promoting its reduction, it would continue to be open to us to send it abroad for treatment, Mr Noonan added.
Sorting refuse in the home, and regulations coupled with incentives to ensure that industry designed its products and packaging to comply with the zero waste concept, would also become part of the new approach as would aggressive support from the government for recycling enterprises.
"We must start thinking of waste as only that which is left over when we have exhausted all the possibilities to reduce, re-use and recycle," said Mr Noonan.
Ms Deirdre Clune, Fine Gael spokeswoman on the environment, said the establishment of a waste commissioner and a new national waste management agency would eliminate the ad hoc approach to managing waste.