Sunday 30 November 2008

‘No need’ for second incinerator in Dublin

Dublin City Council has said there is ‘‘no need’’ for a further waste incinerator in the capital.

This is despite claims at an oral hearing into plans for an incinerator that the Dublin waste management strategy ‘‘does not preclude a second incinerator’’. The hearing, under An Bord Pleanala’s fast-track strategic infrastructure process, is examining plans by Energy Answers International to build a €200 million incinerator, energy recovery and concrete block making facility near Rathcoole, Co Dublin.

Helen O’Keeffe told the hearing last week that, while the Dublin waste management strategy referred to a plant at Poolbeg, ‘‘there is no statement that there is to be only one’’. She said that ‘‘a significant number of developments are not specified’’ in the county plan, but that these had still gone ahead.

However, a spokeswoman for Dublin City Council - one of the four authorities which drew up the county’s waste management strategy - told The Sunday Business Post that ‘‘there is no need for a further incinerator in Dublin’’.

Meanwhile, Indaver Ireland, which has started site development on a €130 million incinerator in Meath, has applied for planning permission to build two incinerators at Ringaskiddy in Cork. Original planning permission for a hazardous waste incinerator in the area expires in January, so the company submitted a new application to An Bord Pleanala last Friday for both hazardous and non-hazardous facilities, in the same location.

Indaver Ireland commercial director Jackie Keaney said she ‘‘hoped’’ the new application would not result in another legal battle with Ringaskiddy residents.

‘‘If we get permission to build, we may just go ahead and not wait for a judicial review of court challenges because Ireland has to divert 1.3 million tonnes, of a total two million that goes to landfill, by 2013,” she said.

Sunday Business Post

www.buckplanning.ie

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