The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has granted a licence for Celtic Waste Ltd to run a so-called "super-dump" in Co Meath, just eight miles from where Indaver Ireland plans to build the State's first municipal waste incinerator.
The EPA waste-management licence will allow the company to operate the landfill on 25 hectares of a 135-hectare site at Knockharley, about eight miles east of Navan between the N2 and N3.
It will be one of the biggest landfills in the State and although it has planning permission to accept up to 132,000 tonnes a year, the EPA has licensed it to accept up to 200,000 tonnes.
It is also about eight miles from Carranstown, the site of the proposed incinerator, and local campaigners are concerned that bottom ash, the end product of incineration, will be accepted at the landfill.
At the EPA's oral hearing into the licence application it emerged that Celtic Waste had expressed an interest in accepting non-hazardous ash from the incinerator proposed by Indaver Ireland and recently granted permission by An Bord Pleanála.
The licence allows it to accept up to 175,000 tonnes of non-hazardous municipal, household and commercial and 25,000 tonnes of commercial and demolition waste.
An Bord Pleanála granted planning permission for the landfill, after an oral hearing, with 24 conditions attached, including that it can accept up to 132,000 tonnes of waste a year and that it originate in counties Louth, Meath, Cavan and Monaghan.
The EPA says that the waste brought to the Knockharley landfill will be from the north-east but Mr Fergal O'Byrne of the Boyne Valley and Newgrange Environ- mental Protection League, says: "This is too vague, you could argue county Fingal is part of the north-east.
"The volume of waste licensed is either too much for the north- east or it really is to allow in Dublin waste. With the decisions made in favour of the landfill and the incinerator, Meath will be the dumping ground for all north Leinster and Dublin waste as well."
East Meath campaigner and member of the anti-incineration group, Mr Pat O'Brien, says east Meath is carrying the can because it is the location for the incinerator and the landfill.
"There has always been a feeling in this region that it was part of an overall plan to build the incinerator and then create a landfill. If the landfill does accept bottom ash, who will test it to say if it's non-hazardous?"
Opponents of the landfill will decide soon if they will mount a legal challenge and next week a public meeting takes place in Drogheda to decide on plans for the anti-incineration campaign.