The leader of the Green Party, Mr Trevor Sargent, has called for a judicial review of the granting of planning permission by An Bord Pleanála earlier this week for the State's first municipal waste incinerator.
It has emerged that the inspector who chaired the board's oral hearing on the issue recommended that it be rejected.
Anti-incineration campaigners reacted with outrage to the news yesterday, saying the local community had spent close to €100,000 to fund its campaign to prevent the incineration, proposed by Indaver Ireland, from going ahead.
"It leads you to suspect that the decision had been made before the oral hearing, and regardless of what the inspector recommended, that the granting of planning permission by Meath County Council was not going to be changed," said Mr Pat O'Brien of the No Incineration Alliance.
Mr Sargent said it raised questions about the political nature of appointments to the board.
"This simply emphasises that in the short term the decision to grant permission was flawed and a judicial review is definitely required.
"In the longer term it questions the independence of An Bord Pleanála which has ignored the planning advice given to it."
The board voted by seven to two to reject the recommendation of the inspector.
The permission was granted with 31 conditions, one of which recommended that the recycling park the company wanted to build on the complex instead be built in the nearby village of Duleek.
Louth TD Mr Fergus O'Dowd said: "If the board found this site is unsuitable for recycling glass bottles and newspaper surely it's even less appropriate for a dioxin-producing incinerator?
"In the interest of transparency and openness, the inspector's report should now be published simultaneously with An Bord Pleanála's decision, so that all the facts are immediately made available, he said.
"I will continue to fight the case with the Environmental Protection Agency," he added.
Indaver Ireland said that in his report the inspector agreed with the company that traffic was not an issue and that the plant would not be visible from Newgrange, although it would be visually intrusive.
Their general manager, Mr John Ahern said: "At the end of the day the answer had to come from the board.
"We have complied with all the legislative requirements and put our project into the planning system and were prepared to accept whatever we got."
Meanwhile, the Environmental Protection Agency yesterday confirmed that it has been assessing the application by the company for a licence to operate the plant since December 2001.
The agency is expected to hold an oral hearing into the application later this year.
The €85 million waste management facility could be operating as the State's first municipal waste incinerator by 2006.