An incinerator is an "essential requirement" if we are to have any hope of sustaining a food industry, the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, said. His warning comes at the beginning of a massive cull of up to 25,000 Irish cattle a week over the next six months.
The Minister is overseeing the arrangements to deal with the "deepest ever crisis" in Ireland caused by the BSE debacle. He describes the animal waste problem arising from that as "horrendous" and considerably more serious for Ireland than the 1996 debacle over BSE in Britain.
He outlined the stark difficulties facing the £1 billion beef industry:
Ireland already has 50,000 tonnes of meat-and-bone meal in stock which no one wants to buy. That quantity is about to multiply. There is an EU ban on feeding this to livestock - that ban may never be lifted.
The Purchase for Destruction Scheme will generate at least another 150,000 tonnes of MBM over the next six months which needs to be disposed of or stored.
In addition, there will be no possibility of sending the Specified Risk Material (SRM) removed from cattle abroad for incineration as happened up to now.
Carcasses of BSE-infected animals will have to be frozen and stored until they can be dealt with. This material is set to grow as intestines are now classified as SRM.
"This is a horrendous situation and we can no longer export our problems abroad as in the past when other memberstates facilitated us. We have to grow up and face the problem now. We need a dose of reality in this country," the Minister said.
"We cannot ignore this problem or dodge it any more. The BSE crisis has made the provision of an incinerator an essential requirement if we are to sustain a food industry." Mr Walsh revealed he is in discussion with the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, over the implementation of the regional waste disposal plans, which have been extremely slow to be adopted. This has delayed the building of municipal incinerators in many regions.
Every time an incinerator was mentioned, local communities and representatives rejected the idea out of hand, he said.
"All of those from all parties who spoke in the Dail during the debate on BSE in December acknowledged the difficulties in dealing with animal waste.
"Among those who spoke, including deputies from the Government parties, from Fine Gael, Labour and the Green Party, there appeared to represent the emergence of a political consensus that there is no viable, alternative option to incineration for the disposal of animal waste material."
Mr Walsh said he would be very happy if this emerging consensus was to feed down to the grassroots in all parties, including his own, so the job could be got on with. He urged people to look at the operation of well-regulated and well-run facilities elsewhere in Europe, and to be aware that any facility here would have to be first approved by a local authority and then obtain an EPA licence.
The Minister said that 20 years ago local communities in Munster were up in arms when the pharmaceutical industry arrived in Ireland but opposition ceased when local people knew it was being strictly run in accordance with the environmental regulations.
"Those plants, to which there was so much opposition some years ago, have now proven themselves to be good corporate citizens of Ireland," he said.
Asked if he would be happy to see an incinerator built in Clonakilty where he lives, Mr Walsh replied: "If it has to be in Cork, so be it," as long as it met all the standards demanded by local authority planners and the Environmental Protection Agency.