EU action over waste could cost Ireland millions of pounds

The European Union has instigated a legal action against the Republic for its failure to implement the 1993 EU directive on waste management. The move leaves the State liable to penalties which could run into millions of pounds.

The difficulty for the Government is that while about 26 of the relevant local authorities have adopted waste management plans, the validity of the plans may be open to question. The directive is aimed at reducing the amount of waste sent to landfill but the Irish local authorities, while eschewing landfill, have also rejected incineration.

The situation was highlighted recently when Roscommon County Council adopted a waste management strategy which rejected incineration and landfill, while espousing recycling, composting and waste reduction.

The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, told The Irish Times that while recycling and composting are "like mother and apple pie" in terms of correctness, they are unlikely to be successful on their own, particularly in the short term.

Even with the volumes of waste generated at regional level where recycling and composting may be viable, the most ambitious target for recycling, at 60 per cent, is in the Dublin area where a campaign is under way against the charges necessary to fund the additional facilities.

In other areas the regional plans have, in any case, been rejected by individual local authorities because they have proposed to incinerate what cannot be recycled. To bring the plans back to the local authorities could take years and there is no guarantee that the results would be any different.

"Yes, we need more time," said Mr Dempsey, "but if the Commission was going to give it to us it would not have instituted the case against us."

In the light of this the prospects in Ireland's case look bleak. The Greek government recently lost a case which claimed that the EU did not have the power to impose fines.