McDowell will not accept project

The Tánaiste, Michael McDowell, has said he will not go into government with any party which allows the proposed incinerator at Poolbeg, Dublin, to go ahead.

He was speaking yesterday outside the An Bord Pleanála hearing on Dublin City Council's application for planning permission for the incinerator, which would burn 600,000 tonnes of waste annually.

The council had lied to the public in relation to the contract with the developers of the incinerator, Mr McDowell said, and regardless of what decision An Bord Pleanála came to he intended to stop it being built. The proposed incinerator is in Mr McDowell's constituency.

While incineration is part of Government policy on the treatment of waste, it was not Government policy to site the incinerator at Poolbeg and the Minister for the Environment has said he had no policy on where the council put the incinerator, Mr McDowell said.

"It isn't true that it was ever discussed at Cabinet - it most certainly has never been the subject of any Government decision. If it had been I would have made it very, very clear that the Progressive Democrats will not stand for it being built and won't in any circumstances finance it."

The decision of the council to locate the incinerator at Poolbeg was "crazy", he said, but in the "very unlikely event" that An Bord Pleanála granted permission, he would continue to block it.

"I have said to my constituents that I will stop this, and I will . . . I will not be part of the government that gives the go-ahead to this project."

The developers of the incinerator, Danish Oil and Natural Gas, had pulled out of the contract, but the council was engaging in a "fairly shabby attempt" to hide this from the public, he said.

"The only people supporting this project are the management of Dublin City Council," he added.

A letter from the council to the Department of the Environment last February stated that the project board of the incinerator had decided to end the procurement process with the Danish consortium and restart the process of securing a contractor.

A spokeswoman for the council said yesterday that negotiations were progressing with Danish Oil and Natural Gas since this letter had been sent.