Ireland is facing a potential environmental disaster because of the failure of regional plans to deliver urgently-needed waste management facilities, a leading industry figure has warned.
Mr Mike Wynne, managing director of Greenstar (formerly Celtic Waste), said it would "not be long before something really nasty happens", such as the poisoning of Dublin's water supply by leachate from illegal dumps in Co Wicklow. He said radical measures were needed to deal with the crisis, including the possibility of privatising "waste assets" held by local authorities to make it worthwhile for private sector companies to invest in recycling and disposal facilities.
Mr Wynne, who previously worked in England, said such an approach had revolutionised waste management throughout the UK in recent years. However, he questioned whether there was the political will to embark on such a course here.
Though the Government's 1998 policy document, "Changing Our Ways", envisaged that 80 per cent of the €1 billion required for new waste facilities would come from the private sector, Mr Wynne said there was still too much uncertainty.
"The average planning permission takes about three years, even for recycling facilities", he complained.
"Virtually everything goes to An Bord Pleanála, which seems to have accepted the flawed regional waste management plans as gospel." Because the Department of the Environment was pursuing an "incineration agenda", landfill sites were being closed down as the volume of waste was going "through the roof" and most of the proposed incinerators would not materialise for five years.
"What's happened in a sense is the Government is being hung by its own rhetoric", Mr Wynne said. "They've seen incineration as the be-all and end-all, ignoring the fabric of existing waste management infrastructure to the extent that it's crumbling."
The Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, "must realise that he won't see an incinerator in Dublin during his term of office and that illegal dumping is only going to get worse unless he deals with the disposal shortfall in short-term", he said.
The Indaver incinerator recently approved by An Bord Pleanála for a site near Duleek, Co Meath, would take at least three years to commission - and, even then, it would be barred from accepting any municipal waste originating in Dublin.
Mr Wynne said it was "ludicrous" that Greenstar's landfill site in Kentstown, Co Meath, which has been approved by the board and by the Environmental Protection Agency, would also be restricted to accepting waste from the north-east region.
With a capacity of between 135,000 and 200,000 tonnes a year, the Kentstown site may take waste from up to 100 miles away in west Cavan, but the terms of its planning permission mean it cannot accept waste from Dublin, just 20 miles away.
Mr Wynne said there was a need to review the "arbitrary" regions for waste management, which had seen both Kildare and Wicklow "going it alone" with Meath joining the north-east region when all three should more rationally be allied with Dublin. Two years ago, Mr Wynne said he had told the Department of the Environment that "it doesn't take a genius to work out that there's a massive problem here, with 1.5 million tonnes of waste swirling about and an inadequate infrastructure to deal with it."
What happened in Britain was that local authorities had "ring-fenced" their waste assets and then sold them to private sector companies which could more easily raise the capital to invest in waste facilities that would meet the terms of EU legislation.
"It would take a brave decision by somebody to make this happen here", Mr Wynne said. "But radical problems need radical solutions, and something needs to be done to lift the mist of uncertainty that is making companies wary of investing here."
Greenstar, the biggest company in the sector here with a turnover of €80 million, recently bought a UK recycling company to spread its risks. It is currently operating facilities in Dublin, Kildare, Limerick and Waterford and developing one in Cork.