HOTELIER LOUIS Moriarty and his company Swalcliffe Ltd have been fined €60,000 at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for illegal dumping in Co Wicklow.
Mr Moriarty of Griffith Avenue, Drumcondra, Dublin, pleaded guilty to disposing of waste in a manner that could cause pollution at Coolnamadra and at Whitestown, in Co Wicklow over three months in 2001.
Mr Moriarty has since paid €1.3 million for the restitution of the Coolnamadra dump, although Judge Tony Hunt yesterday noted that Mr Moriarty’s company had not been responsible for the entirety of the illegal dumping which took place there.
Mr Moriarty has said he is also willing to pay for remediation work at the Whitestown dump, but this is awaiting a High Court determination on who was responsible and who should bear the costs of the clean-up.
Wicklow County Council has asked the High Court to determine liability for the remediation of Whitestown in an action against a number of defendants which include Mr Moriarty; Brownfield Restoration Ireland, the current owners of that dump; John O’Reilly the former owner of the dump and Dean Waste, trading as A1 Waste.
During the course of Wicklow County Council’s action it was alleged that the council’s consultant Donal O’Laoire had created a conflict of interest by attempting to put together a consortium to remediate Whitestown and other dumps in Co Wicklow, in which he himself was involved.
In the course of the High Court action it emerged that up to 8,000 tonnes of the council’s own waste, including tar and bitumen from road building, had also been dumped in Whitestown over a four-month period from late 2001.
It also emerged that a number of other organisations whom the council determined were involved in dumping at Whitestown were not included in the council’s High Court action.
A number of people have been sentenced at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court after the discovery of illegal dumps in Co Wicklow. Adrian Munnelly (29), a truck driver of Ballynacargy, Co Westmeath, pleaded guilty to disposing of waste at Coolnamadra and was fined €5,000 by Judge Katherine Delahunt last November.
Last May, Anthony Dean (56), owner of A1 Waste, was fined €10,000 after he pleaded guilty to undertaking the recovery of lorry loads of waste at Whitestown.
John O’Reilly (64), now of Robertstown, Naas, who then owned the Whitestown site, was fined €150,000 in July 2006 at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court for allowing his land to be used as an illegal waste dump in 2001.
Neville Watson (41) of Kilmurray, Trim, Co Meath who was working for Mr Moriarty hauling waste at the time, was jailed for six months. He pleaded guilty to not having a licence under the Waste Management Act for use of the site for dumping waste on dates between November and December 2001.
Clifford Fenton, landowner at Coolnamadra, was fined €70,000 in December 2008 at Wicklow Circuit Criminal Court for allowing up to 8,000 tonnes of illegal waste to be dumped on his land in 2001.