Many areas of the State are running out of waste disposal capacity and a "crisis of epic proportions" looms, the Construction Industry Federation warned yesterday.
It has called for a national authority to oversee regional waste plans and impose them where there is a failure to implement them locally.
Mr Don O'Sullivan, a director of the federation, told its annual convention in Galway that urgent action was required to offset a waste management crisis.
"Ireland still has no incinerator, no major material recovery facility, no combustors and no digesters. It seems as if we have our heads in the sand, hoping the problem will simply go away," he said.
"If the Irish economy is to grow, to realise its potential to become a sustainable, first-class world economy, we must put in place a properly functioning and properly resourced waste management infrastructure."
Mr O'Sullivan said progress on the issue had been hindered by the fact that the State was divided into 10 waste regions. All operated independently of each other "and have, in fact, adopted the policy of refusing to take waste from one another".
"On an island the size of Ireland, this is simply ridiculous and makes the possibility of implementing a strategic spatial approach to the provision of waste infrastructure virtually impossible," he told delegates.
The "quite bizarre situation", he said, was that it was legal to export waste from any Irish county for incineration in Germany, but illegal to take waste across a county boundary.
"We don't need 11 incinerators in Ireland but we certainly need five or six and we simply can't afford the luxury of saying, for example, that Galway waste can't be taken to Westmeath, or Longford waste can't go to Meath."
Investment in waste infrastructure envisaged in the National Development Plan had failed to materialise, he said. The result was that many areas, including Dublin, would have no waste disposal capacity within five years unless urgent action was taken.
"The seriousness of the situation is underlined by the fact that is costs €200 per tonne to dispose of waste in Dublin compared to most other European countries, where it costs an average of about €60," he added.
"This acts as a deterrent to inward investment and to indigenous industrial and commercial innovation and development."
Ireland ranked highest of five European states for the amount of packaging placed on the market per head in 2002, economist Dr Peter Bacon told the annual conference of Repak, the industry-led recycling initiative.
He said greater investment in infrastructure was needed to raise household access to recycling facilities.
Repak chairman Mr Adrian Goodrich said unrealistic EU targets and additional levies were significant challenges to recycling of packaging in Ireland. He also said businesses not complying with current waste packaging regulations were costing industry €5 million a year.
