Bigger engines undoing gains from more environmental cars

Environmental improvements in cars imported into Ireland are being "negated" because we are buying more cars with bigger engines, the director general of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Dr Mary Kelly, said yesterday.

Delivering a report on the state of the Republic's environment at a conference in Dublin organised by the EPA, Dr Kelly also said increased rural house-building was causing concerns about landscape and pollution issues.

Dr Kelly said environmental progress and economic and social progress should go hand in hand, and there was "no evidence" to suggest that regulatory frameworks in agriculture, waste management or the environment created an anti-competitive business market.

She highlighted the car market where improvements in manufacturing in line with better environmental performance "were being negated because of the increase in the numbers of cars and the size of their engines".

Another example of the difficulty of sustaining environmental improvements, she said, was maintaining waste management levels as consumption expanded.

She instanced Repak, the industry-based recycling scheme, which she said had been very successful in achieving recycling targets in excess of 50 per cent.

However, as more goods and packaging entered the market, Repak would have to work harder all the time to even maintain its success in percentage terms.

In relation to rural housing, Dr Kelly said concerns about the environment were now being raised. The environment was often seen as pulling against objectives of economic development or other social wants.

However, future economic and social well-being were intrinsically linked with protecting Ireland's environment and putting it at the heart of Irish society.

The conference, which continues today, will discuss where all-island co-operation to manage and plan protection on the island can be initiated or extended.

Dr Kelly said such collaboration was needed as "environmental issues often do not recognise borders" and the North-South focus was an important feature of this year's conference.

"While waste management and water protection are practical areas where co-operation is already ongoing, there are other areas, such as environmental governance, where we can learn from each other."