The Government is to relax waste management rules to allow new landfills and incinerators to accept waste from all over the State, writes Liam Reid.
Guidelines that restricted dumps to accepting waste from within their own regions are being reviewed, following lobbying from waste firms.
The waste firms have argued that current limits could jeopardise the private financing of some projects, which is seen as a vital part of the State's waste management plans.
Local authorities have also complained that the current guidelines are too restrictive.
Existing Government policy stipulates that each region must deal with its own waste. The policy has seen the emergence of 10 separate waste management regions, which have all drawn up long term plans for dealing with their rubbish.
As a result, many of the facilities that have received planning approval in recent times have had strict conditions attached, restricting them to accepting waste from within their own region.
In Co Meath, a 135-hectare dump being built by Greenstar at Knockharley is confined to accepting waste from the north east region of Meath, Cavan, Monaghan and Louth.
An €80 million incinerator, planned for Carranstown, has also been confined to accepting waste from the same region.
Meanwhile, An Bord Pleanála has also restricted another proposed Greenstar facility, at Ballynagran in Co Wicklow, to accepting 180,000 tonnes of waste a year - two-thirds of it from Co Wicklow and one-third from neighbouring counties.
The guidelines have also had the effect of ensuring against the development of huge 'superdumps' to take massive amounts of waste from around the country.
The proposed relaxing of the rules was indicated earlier this month in an interim review of Irish waste management policy by the Department of the Environment.
According to the review, while the restrictions of the planning authorities were well-intentioned, "a planning condition of this kind is too blunt an instrument for this purpose".
And while facilities in a specific region must "serve primarily" the needs of that region, "careful consideration needs to be given to whether the imposition of blanket prohibitions on all cross-regional movements of waste" is appropriate.
The Department is now committed to issuing new advice and guidelines on the issue by the end of the summer.
However, a spokesman for the Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, denied that the relaxation will allow for the creation of so-called superdumps. The regional waste plans and the regional approach would still apply, he said.