The ‘tough’ Dublin businessman who lost his fight with the environmental regulator

A “tough” Dublin businessman whose waste management company made millions of euro off the back of the Celtic Tiger building boom, finally lost his two-decade fight with the State’s environmental regulator last week.

Tony Dean (71), who had an address in Woodhaven, Milltown, south Dublin, was handed a three-year prison sentence with the final year suspended, for environmental breaches at a Co Kildare landfill.

Once the owner of a multimillion-euro waste business during the boom years, Dean is now serving a prison term for breaches of the Waste Management Act, 1996.

The jail term is new but the activities of his firm, Dean Waste Company, have been on the radar of authorities as far back as the early 2000s.

Tony O’Reilly obituary: Ireland’s first business superstar whose spectacular fall led to bankruptcy

---

Cliff Taylor: Pay close attention to what Intel does next. It’s a test case for Ireland

---

How Ireland drinks now: Teetotallers, wine-o’clockers and ex-drinkers

---

As a director, Dean was previously fined €10,000 in 2009 for the recovery of waste without a licence at a site at Whitestown Quarry near Baltinglass, Co Wicklow in 1998.

However, it was the management of a landfill in Kerdiffstown, near Naas, that led to him being handed a prison sentence last week.

He was found guilty at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court last November of two breaches of a waste management licence and of holding or recovering waste in a manner likely to cause environmental pollution.

The charges followed an investigation by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the State’s environmental watchdog, relating to a period from October 2003 to November 2008 at the Kerdiffstown landfill.

Imposing the jail sentence on June 9th, Judge Melanie Greally said the breaches had a “significant environmental impact” and an effect on activities and the residents of nearby properties.

Set up in the early 1980s, Dean Waste grew into one of the biggest waste management operators in the country, before it was wiped out in the economic crisis that followed the Celtic Tiger.

The company was primarily involved in the disposal of waste from the construction sector.

Trading as A1 Waste, it reported €45 million in operating profit between 2001 and 2008, during the heady days of the building boom. It had a turnover of more than €180 million during the period, peaking at €27 million in 2005, according to company records.

The Dublin businessman had a “reputation for being very tough”, as well as someone who was “streetwise” and “savvy with numbers”, said one former associate.

Despite his company turning several million euros in profits during the boom, he “wasn’t a flashy guy”, the former colleague told The Irish Times.

While Dean Waste maintained a turnover of more than €20 million in 2008, its operating profit collapsed to less than €750,000 as the country’s building boom came to a screeching halt.

One source who knew Dean in the early 2000s described his business as “100 per cent tied to the builders”.

Accounts filed in 2000 noted the company was doing well from the “favourable trading conditions in the construction industry”. The directors anticipated a continued increase in turnover, as demand from the construction sector grew.

Business consultant

And increase it did, with the company reporting profits of several million euros a year up until the economic crash of 2008.

Dean, a supporter of Fianna Fáil at the time, was recorded as donating €6,000 to the party in 2002. Former Fianna Fáil fundraiser Des Richardson also confirmed he previously worked as a business consultant with Dean for a period during the Celtic Tiger.

However, the reliance on business from developers meant when the activity in the construction industry fell off a cliff during the recession, Dean Waste followed it over the edge. The company went into receivership in 2010, with several of Dean’s other companies also later dissolved.

Dean’s company which controlled the Kerdiffstown landfill, Jenzsoph Ltd, was fined €20 million in 2015 for causing pollution and “nuisance odours” at the site. But the fines remain unpaid, as the company has been dissolved. Dean himself made a significant settlement for €2.3 million with Revenue in 2017 over under-declared income tax, following an offshore funds investigation by officials.

The settlement, disclosed in the tax defaulters list that year, related to more than €740,000 in tax, interest of €1 million and an extra €550,000 penalty.

Dean was previously involved in City Bin, the household waste collection company that serves Dublin and Galway.

His company bought half of the shares in the Galway-based business two years after it was set up in the late 1990s, with Dean listed as a director until the mid-2000s.

One source familiar with the deal said Dean had a “passive” stake and was not involved in the management of the household bin collection company.

In 2007 Dean Waste was bought out of City Bin by its original founders, who it is understood had no further business dealings with Dean afterwards.

Around the time Dean’s business was collapsing in 2010 the Kerdiffstown landfill was abandoned, with the EPA and later Kildare County Council taking over the site.

Inspections by the EPA had identified increasing concern with a growing mound of waste at the site between 2003 and 2008, which contravened the terms of the landfill’s licence.

A 2017 environmental impact assessment for the council warned the landfill posed a “long-term risk to the environment due to pollution by landfill gas, odour and leachate” if left untreated.

Environmental damage

In total it has cost the State more than €60 million to remediate the site to prevent further environmental damage and redevelop it as a public park, the court heard.

Dean’s approach to the EPA was described by one former colleague as attempting to “fight” the regulator off.

“He thought he could beat City Hall,” said the former colleague.

His court case heard how he had hired Dr Ted Nealon (64), a former EPA inspector with an address on Winton Avenue, Rathgar, Dublin 6, to advise him and deal with the regulator day-to-day.

Dr Nealon had worked as a senior EPA inspector involved in waste licensing, leaving the State agency in 2000 and starting work as a consultant with Dean Waste about 2003.

Dr Nealon, who became a director of the company in 2008, was previously charged in relation to the Kerdiffstown landfill but later acquitted. He continues to run an environmental services consultancy firm and has also lectured at Trinity College Dublin on a “limited basis” in recent years, said a university spokeswoman.

Dr Nealon had contributed as a “guest lecturer” to the university’s diploma course in environmental engineering, she said.

In response to queries from The Irish Times, Dr Nealon said “some of what was said in court was not true and was defamatory”.

He said he believed this was “apparently an effort by Tony Dean to shift the blame to me to try and get off”.