Taoiseach, people will have been shocked and horrified at last night's RTE Primetime Investigates
programme which revealed appaling levels of environmental criminality.
Pitiful regulatory enforcement.
And a governance regime that allows wholesale and destructive pollution of our lakes, our
rivers, our sea and indeed forests.
Without question, as a result of the environmental damage being done, human health itself will
have been placed at risk by this criminality.
The program makers deserve great credit for their work.
And what they did reveal was a darker and indeed dangerous side to the Wile Atlantic
Way.
Because the fragmented enforcement regime across the country was laid bare particularly
in the west, Clifden, Tuam, County Donegal and much much more.
Apalling stories were told about the illegal dumping of commercial and household waste.
And yet there are only 150 people combined across all the authorities involved in enforcement.
And clearly what emerged from the programme itself is that enforcement itself needs to
be resourced far more effectively.
And funding needs to be allocated for clean-up and waste recovery for such illegal dumping,
particularly as illustrated by the story of the Bray landfill site.
The specific example of Donegal county council's performance on waste management needs to be
investigated.
The breach of licence operation in Killarney was quite staggering, yet there appears to
have been a passive tolerance of this by the authorities.
A special area of conservation was dumped on near the river Barrow, in an extraordinary,
brazen way.
Which again threatened groundwater and the environmental purity of that area and indeed
human health through asbestos waste being dumped.
And waste going from the South to the North.
So Taoiseach, do you accept that the regulatory system governing waste collection and disposal
is fragmented, is ineffective and is poorly resourced?
Will you consider Taoiseach, a form of fact-finding enquiry to get a truly national picture of
the story around waste collection right now in our country.
Waste collection, disposal, enforcement and the application of the regulatory regime sot
that we can find out what is going on in our industry to inform future policy.
Will Minister Naughten make himself available to the house this week to answer questions
on the issues that arise from the RTE Investigates programme & indeed Minister Murphy might accompany
him if there are areas in terms of local authority enforcement that come under his remit.
I'm quite disappointed with your response Taoiseach, the pettiness of it.
You know that waste management is exclusively and executive function and the point is you
imply a certain complacency - 'we've come along way'.
In some respects we might have, but watching last night, the householder thinks they''re
recycling, the householder is playing their part, but a lot of these companies are not.
And what we thought was going in to proper facilities is not going in to proper facilities.
Ground water is being contaminated.
Land is being contaminated.
Human health is at risk.
We can't be complacent about this.
The EPA is not governed by any councillors.
It has issues in terms of transfer stations and the areas of enforcement.
And the regular breaching of licences.
The lack of any forceful impact from the regulatory regime.
This cries out for a more urgent response than you have issued in your reply, Taoisach.
Now I did ask you if you would ask Minister Murphy and Minister Naughten to come before
the house to take questions.
I also asked you would you consider a fact finding enquiry to get a nature of what was
revealed yesterday.
Because we can just say we've come a long way and let's move on, but I think a tipping
point has been reached and we need to deal with this and make sure this kind of thing
never happens again.