Ban on incinerators explored at hearing

The Cork County Development Plan of 2003 was in "conflict with itself" in seeking to exclude the site chosen by Indaver Ireland for its €90 million hazardous waste incinerator, the An Bord Pleanála hearing into the proposed incinerator heard yesterday.

Dr Brian Meehan, a planning consultant, told the hearing in Cork that while the county development plan appeared to explicitly ban contract incinerators from industrial areas, other passages detailed the need to have incineration facilities to serve and facilitate the expansion of the pharmaceutical industry.

That industry was located in Ringaskiddy where the 30-acre site chosen by Indaver was also. Dr Meehan claimed the ban on contract incineration in the development plan was imprecise and it was unclear whether the wording banned just contract incineration in industrial estates, or in the entire Cork region. However, in answer to questions from the planning inspector, Mr Phillip Jones, Dr Meehan said he accepted that because of the ban on contract incinerators in industrial areas, the current Indaver proposal amounted to a material contravention of the county development plan.

He also acknowledged that in a case in Co Meath where the development plan was challenged on the grounds of national policy, the courts had found "having regard to" did not mean being "in accordance with".

Dr Meehan agreed with Mr Jones that councillors could have regard to Government policy and subsequently reject it. The managing director of Indaver Ireland, Mr John Ahern, told the inquiry that his business handled just over 53 per cent of all hazardous waste exported from the Republic for incineration in 2001, some 24,000 tonnes. Of that 14,877 tonnes or more than 60 per cent came from the Cork area.