The Wicklow county manager, Mr Eddie Sheehy, has defended the actions of the council in tackling illegal dumping.
He accused county councillors yesterday of insulting staff by suggesting they were facilitating and rewarding illegal activity.
During a debate on illegal dumping, which had to be suspended at one stage because of arguments and accusations between councillors and staff, Mr Sheehy maintained that the council had the best record of any local authority in tackling illegal dumping.
He made his comments as a number of councillors accused him and council staff of trying to cover it up.
They claimed that a council proposal to allow a Cement Roadstone Holdings subsidiary to deal with three illegal dumps on its lands in Blessington, by landfilling most of the waste on a purpose-built landfill on site, was allowing the company to avoid its responsibility.
Cllr Nicky Kelly of the Labour Party said waste-enforcement staff were "picking on the small fellow".
Mr Sheehy said claims of deals were "simply offensive to the hard-working, dedicated staff who have spent three years in dirty and dangerous conditions investigating illegal dumps".
He said Roadstone had always denied any knowledge of the dumping on its land and had at all times co-operated fully with the council investigation, paying the €500,000 investigation costs of council.
Wicklow County Council, he continued, was also the only local authority to have successfully secured a jail sentence against an illegal waste operator and to obtain a High Court order to remove waste from another illegal site.
The council was also taking legal action to have two other major illegal dump sites at Whitestown and Stevenson's Quarry cleaned up.
The Roadstone and other sites had been at the centre of a Garda investigation. A file on the Roadstone site had been sent to the Director of Public Prosecutions who would ultimately decide what and whom would be prosecuted. "It's not up to me," Mr Sheehy said.
Councillors were discussing a motion, proposed by Independent councillor Mr Tommy Cullen, to include a clause in the county development plan to outlaw the use of quarries as landfill sites, in an attempt to block the Roadstone proposal.
Councillors voted narrowly to reject the proposal after staff told them it could not be legally included in the plan.
Earlier on, Mr Cullen was also at the centre of a bitter exchange with council colleagues and the county manager over an unlicensed landfill at Kilpedder.
The site of the landfill has caused a three-year delay of a road-improvement scheme after engineers had to redesign an interchange to avoid it.
After an attempt by Green Party councillor Ms Deirdre de Burca to raise the issue was ruled out of order by council chairman, Mr John Byrne, the meeting degenerated. Mr Cullen accused Mr Sheehy of trying to cover up the case by preventing the debate.
Mr Sheehy, who at one stage accused Mr Cullen of "acting like a school bully", denied the accusation and said the site had been public knowledge since the early 1990s.
A shouting match ensued between Mr Cullen and other councillors, including Mr Tom Fortune of Labour, who accused him of "looking for headlines".
The meeting was suspended for five minutes as the chairman attempted to regain control of proceedings.