Incinerators will have to be built in the Republic of Ireland under fast-track planning rules, the Taoiseach has indicated.
In Shanghai yesterday, Mr Ahern said the Department of the Environment was re-examining the planning rules.
Asked specifically about the need for greater speed in the creation of incinerators, Mr Ahern replied: "If you have a broad national infrastructure board that puts everything through a fast track, it will not work. People will just see this as a a back door trying to press controversial projects through.
"That won't work. In our system that will inevitably bring just more litigation."
But he added: "We cannot go on, we cannot go on as a country exporting our offal to other countries and ask them to incinerate it.
"We can't go on exporting our medical waste to be incinerated in other countries. We can't go on doing that. That is just total hypocritical position.
"If you have a waste-management policy, then we have to have a waste-management policy that deals with our waste," he said.
Nearly two year ago, the Government committed itself to setting up a fast-track National Infrastructure Board (NIB) which would have the final say on key projects, such as incinerators, major roads and gas pipelines.
However, the plan has been stalled since, partly because of fears by ministers that incinerators could be sited in their own constituencies.
The rapid pace of development in both Beijing and Shanghai has particularly struck the Taoiseach during this week's trade mission.
Following a meeting yesterday with the mayor of Shanghai, Mr Han Zheng, who controls a population of 12 million people, Mr Ahern contrasted the powers he enjoys compared to the mayor.
"Naturally enough I would like to have the power of the mayor that when he decides he wants to do a highway and if wants to bypass an area, he just goes straight up and over.
"I know that that is not going to happen at home. I would just like when I am trying to put it on the ground that we can put it through the consultation process as quick as possible," he said.
Other countries had final arbiters like the proposed NIB, he said.
"I don't care how stringent the process is, what delays us in Ireland is that we start with local planning boards and then regional planning boards and then An Bord Pleanála, and then you go through the courts again.
"That is what other countries do not do. That is why we end up having plans like the M6 where we are having a row about who was there 5,000 years ago.
"I don't know who was there 5,000 years ago and I am sure they were very significant people, but somewhere along the way you have to come to an end of a process."
The Republic must have a speedy but environmentally sensitive planning policy, he said, "if we want to be progressive, if we want to be modern, if we have to have high employment.
"What I would like to do is get an agreement that whatever process and whatever the rigours are, that. . . it has finality."
The pace of development in China is staggering, as can be seen by its intention to build more than 50,000 kilometres of multi-lane highways over the next 25 years, including an expressway tunnel linking it with Taiwan. Between now and 2010, China intends to spend €15 billion a year on motorways alone, falling to about €10 billion in the following decade.
Questioned about the Institute of Engineers' criticisms of the National Development Plan, Mr Ahern defended the Government's performance.
"Every year they make a report and every year I am asked the question they said something negative and every year I get letters from the Institute of Engineers saying that that was just one of the 99 recommendations that they made."
This year was no exception, he added.