Row over sewage plant extension

Dublin city councillors are to meet the assistant city manager, Matt Twomey, tomorrow to ask why an extension to the Ringsend sewage plant was approved without their knowledge.

The councillors claim they did not know about the planned extension of the plant that emits noxious odours across the southeast of Dublin and is the subject of legal action by the European Commission.

However, Mr Twomey said proposals for an extension have been in the public domain since 1997 and the Minister for the Environment sanctioned financing last May under the water services investment programme for 2004 to 2006.

The €300 million waste water treatment plant opened in 2003 to deal with the waste from 1.6 million people. The council intends to extend it to increase capacity by 30 per cent. The council has yet to agree the final takeover of the plant from the contractors, ABA, because they have not remedied the odour problem.

Labour councillor for the Ringsend area, Dermot Lacey, who was lord mayor when the plant opened, said he did not know about the extension until this week. "I'm fairly furious about this. I met Matt Twomey the day before this came out, he could have said it then. There was a meeting of the area committee last week, we could have been told then. I'm fairly outraged. They can't get the situation with the smell right, yet they are asking the community to accept an expansion."

Sinn Féin Cllr Daithí Doolan said he and his colleagues could not support any extension of the plant while the odour problem was ongoing.

"None of the councillors in the area knew about this. How can we trust this manager now to guarantee that the odour problem won't happen again and be worse."

Fianna Fáil Cllr Garry Keegan said the failure to inform councillors of the expansion had left the community in the dark about the development.

The chairman of the local environmental group, Damien Cassidy, said he will be objecting to the expansion if it reaches planning application stage. "There is no provision for any extension in the Environmental Impact Statement, but there is a stipulation that there be no odour from the plant, the council is just digging a deeper hole for itself."