ENVIRONMENTAL campaigner Erin Brockovich has revealed she met Minister for the Environment John Gormley during her visit to Ireland to discuss the toxic waste problem in Cork harbour.
The former legal clerk, who famously took on a massive US power company accused of toxic leaks, was contacted earlier this year by Cork's Red FM who were interested in her thoughts on the situation at the Cork site.
Residents living near Haulbowline, Co Cork, expressed anxiety in June after it was disclosed almost 500,000 tonnes of waste are buried at the former Irish Steel/Ispat site.
Ms Brockovich urged residents to find out the truth of the situation at the local steel plant. During her visit to Dublin last week she met Mr Gormley and the pair had a "long discussion" on what could be done to clean up the site.
Speaking to Cork's Red FM over the weekend, Ms Brockovich said she was pleased to find that Minister Gormley was keen on having "awareness and communication" within the community.
However, she said the site ought to be cleaned up as a matter of urgency. "It has to be cleaned up. It is not like the contamination happened yesterday and you guys found out two days later.
"And that is what you have to be concerned about. The exposure has already happened and latency periods are probably running and that is probably why you are beginning to see a sick community.
"So a couple of parallels have to occur. Medical monitoring is an option for people to monitor what happens to them. You have got to clean it up and clean-up processes are very very expensive."
Erin Brockovich is an American legal clerk who, despite the lack of a formal law school education, was instrumental in constructing a case against the $28 billion California-based Pacific Gas and Electric Company in 1993.
The case alleged contamination of drinking water with hexavalent chromium, also known as chromium six, in the southern California town of Hinkley.
Her story is the topic of a feature film, Erin Brockovich, starring Julia Roberts in the title role.
Earlier this month Mr Gormley said that results of an investigation into waste material from the former Irish Ispat plant at Haulbowline suggested the waste did not pose any major threat to public health.
Mr Gormley stressed that consultants White Young Green (WYG) were still awaiting some test results from samples taken at the former plant, but all indications so far suggested there was no cause for alarm regarding the waste being harmful to residents of the Cork harbour area.
He said he hoped to receive the completed report from WYG by the end of the month and it would then be peer reviewed before he brought proposals to Cabinet.