There is no emergency plan to deal with a major incident at the proposed Indaver incinerator planned for Ringaskiddy, according to Cork County Council's senior executive fire officer.
Giving evidence yesterday to the Bord Pleanála hearing into the incinerator, Mr Michael Hession said while the council had met Indaver personnel to discuss the plant, it was too early for a detailed assessment of the safety implications.
Challenged by a resident, Mr Seán Cronin, to indicate on a map how 825 members of staff and students at the National Maritime College might escape such an incident without having to pass the gates of the proposed incinerator, Mr Hession declined to give an immediate answer, saying the map would have to be studied.
Responding to the possibility of an accident involving chemicals and toxic or explosive substances in the Lee Tunnel, Mr Hession said fire safety in the tunnel was primarily a matter for the city council.
Where a cloud of corrosive gas or a danger to health had occurred, communication with locals would be through the media.
In reply to the planning inspector, Mr Philip Jones, Mr Hession said although he would be aware of planning applications when they came before the county council, it was not generally policy to recommend a refusal or acceptance at that stage.
The fire officers' opinions were sought when a proposal required a fire safety certificate and in that respect the fire department's attitude to the Indaver proposals was that it was too early to assess the project.
The approach was criticised by several members of the Cork Harbour for a Safe Environment (CHASE), who suggested the fire officers' opinions should be critical in the early stages of consideration of a planning application.
In the second week of the inquiry into the €90 million toxic and hazardous waste incinerator, a range of technical experts and the managing director of Indaver Ireland, Mr John Ahern, were cross-examined.
Mr Ahern told the inquiry that without an incinerator of its own, the State was placing a burden on industry which would erode competitiveness and lead to foreign investors to set up elsewhere.
He maintained that Britain, which is the Republic's largest destination for hazardous waste, was drafting laws to stop facilities there accepting waste from the Republic. Some waste which goes to landfill in Germany will not be accepted there after 2005.
Mr Ahern was challenged by Mr Peter North of CHASE that the type of incinerator, described as a "fluidised bed", was different to all other incinerators operated by Indaver across Europe.
Mr North suggested that Indaver was making "guinea pigs of the people of Cork". He also questioned the number of qualified engineers who would be on site at all times and the segregation facilities for safe removal of items which could be explosive.
However, Mr Ahern said the new fluid bed incinerator was part of developing the Indaver business, which could not be expected to ignore additional techniques. He said explosive items such as chlorinated materials would be separated at a transfer station in the plant and would be sent, as happened now, to a recovery facility in Antwerp.
A spokeswoman for the Ringaskiddy and Districts Residents Association told the inquiry that pharmaceutical companies had come and gone and been replaced by pharmaceutical companies without the benefit of an incinerator in Cork.