Hospital accused of breaking waste disposal terms

A DUBLIN hospital has been breaking planning laws by treating waste from all over the Eastern Health Board area, according to the Fianna Fail spokesman on the environment, Mr Noel Dempsey.

The James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown got planning permission for a microwave waste treatment plant on condition that it would only be used for material from that hospital, Mr Dempsey said.

In fact, the facility continues to be used to treat waste from across, the Eastern Health Board area.

Mr Dempsey said the planning condition was "to ensure that Blanchardstown was not turned into a super dump. Because of the total chaos in the management of medical waste, that is exactly what has happened."

Mr Dempsey said the EHB wrote to Fingal County Council on July 4th assuring it that the hospital was complying with the planning condition, which was laid down in March this year. Last night no one from the EHB was available for comment.

Mr Dempsey's statement comes two days after a report that hospitals are stockpiling medical waste that had previously been sent to Britain for incineration.

The Department of Health has said it is arranging for the waste to be shipped to Holland for incineration and this should be in place within a month.

Beaumont Hospital in Dublin yesterday started filling its fourth 40 foot container with medical waste since the ban. The hospital has room for more containers, but it will have to ship the waste out at some stage.

Mr Martin Igoe, general services manager at the Mater Hospital, said the hospital was storing its medical waste in the hospital incinerator. The incinerator ceased operating in the summer after it failed to meet criteria laid down by the Environmental Protection Agency.

He said the cost of waste disposal had increased up to sixfold when the hospital had to shut down its incinerator.

A businessman who sells microwave treatment systems criticised the Department's plan for a centralised waste disposal system. Mr Pearse Stokes of Ecomed said his company had tendered for the national healthcare waste disposal facility and was told to approach companies who were tendering to provide a central waste facility.

Mr Stokes said he estimated that trucks carrying medical waste would travel 500,000 miles a year to transport the waste to central disposal facilities. "The fundamental point is that waste can actually be treated on the premises."