FOUR technologies suggested by Greenpeace were unsuitable for air pollution control at the Roche Ireland plant at Clarecastle, it was claimed at an inquiry in Ennis, Co Clare yesterday.
On the fourth and final day of the Environmental Protection Agency's inquiry, Mr Derek Banks, a chemical engineer at the plant, said the technologies Greenpeace suggested had been developed for very specific and completely different waste disposal applications.
As yet, they were not available on a commercial scale and so had a very limited track record, he said. "I could not recommend these as alternatives to our chosen option of direct fired thermal incineration."
He said Roche Ireland had significantly reduced emissions of volatile organic compounds since 1991, from 1,100 tonnes to 440 tonnes.
"This reduction of over 60 per cent has been achieved during a period when product output increased by 50 per cent. With an operational incinerator Roche will be able to achieve a reduction in emissions of more than 95 per cent from 1991 levels," he said.
Mr John Hanly, retired principal of Clarecastle school and a member of Clare Alliance, drew attention to the internationally important bird habitat in the Fergus estuary, a few miles downstream from the Roche plant. He said the numbers of all bird species in the estuary, both resident and visiting, had decreased dramatically.
Roche planned to increase the volume of effluent entering the estuary if they built an incinerator. It was outrageous that a comprehensive ecological survey had not been carried out, he said. Since the Syntex plant had started production, three internationally important bird species had shown a 70 per cent decrease in the estuary, he added.
Mr Derry Chambers, of the Cork Environmental Alliance, said that before the EPA was established, the CEA had noted 1,861 breaches of licences among 13 companies in Cork Harbour. The licensing authority had taken no action. Now they had found the EPA "to be toothless".
Mr Kieran O'Brien, the EPA's Cork regional manager, chaired the inquiry, the EPA's first oral appeal hearing.