Opponents of Treasury Holdings' plan snap up its dotcom domain

Property development firm Treasury Holdings has had its dotcom domain name snatched up by a Lusk community group campaigning against a Treasury Holdings-backed waste facility project.

According to Mr Tim Kirby, a Lusk website developer who is running the campaign, he discovered the Treasuryholdings.com domain name was available while doing research on the company. He then paid the $37 (€40) annual fee to obtain the rights to the name.

A spokesman for Treasury Holdings confirmed the company had forgotten to renew the registration on the domain name, which it had owned but not used actively in the past. Treasury Holdings uses Treasuryholdings.ie as its primary website. "The dotcom fell between the cracks a little bit and it lapsed," he said.

Mr Kirby is using the Treasuryholdings.com domain to mirror his community information site called Luskpeople.com, which provides a range of information on the Lusk area. Mr Kirby, an environmentalist, used the sites to mount a campaign against incinerators, called No Incinerators in Lusk (NIL), yesterday.

Mr Kirby claims the Treasury Holdings project, proposed jointly with German waste management firm Herhof, is an incinerator because it would compress and burn 30 per cent of its waste. This "dry fuel" would be used to run a power plant on the Lusk site.

Treasury Holdings disputes calling the facility an incinerator because it is not a "mass-burn" facility. The bulk of the waste, including metals, glass, batteries, ceramics and stone, are separated out and recycled. The spokesman acknowledged the plant would put out some emissions but was comparable to many other generally clean power facilities.

Mr Kirby said that dioxin emissions remained an issue and added that ash produced by the facility, which contained hazardous materials, would be placed in landfills. He said the Lusk area produced 40 per cent of the State's fruit and vegetables and agriculture could be threatened by such a plant, because many supermarkets would not buy from farmers at risk from dioxin fallout .

Mr Kirby insisted he was not cybersquatting - sitting on a domain name until an interested company pays to have it handed over. "We're using the site as an extra doorway," he said. "It's not for sale. We've got every interest in the words 'Treasury Holdings' because what they want to do will affect my community for years to come," he said.

Domain name disputes that have gone to court in the United States - which oversees the dotcom domain - have focused on whether a domain name holder has a legitimate right to the use of the terms in the name, and whether the domain name holder is trying to extort money from a rightful name holder.

The company was talking to Mr Kirby about re-acquiring the domain name and at present had no interest in going to court.