Despite screeds of policies, plans and laws, waste-management in the Republic is still struggling, writes Frank McDonald, Environment Editor. So, what is to be done?
It might have seemed like a good idea at the time, for the optics of "devolution", to give local councillors power over regional waste management plans. But it all fell apart when four councils simply refused to adopt plans after feeling the heat from pressure groups.
As a result, legislation had to be rushed through the Oireachtas last year transferring the power - at least temporarily - to adopt regional waste plans from elected councillors to unelected county managers. Otherwise, little progress would have been made in dealing with the waste mountain.
Yet there has been a reluctance to set up any structure at national level, other than purely advisory bodies, despite a call from Forfás, the industrial policy advisory board, for the establishment of a national waste management agency with "step-in" powers to implement regional waste plans.
Reflecting the frustration felt by industry over the worsening waste crisis, Forfás also proposed last December that fast-track planning procedures needed to be put in place to speed up the provision of disposal and treatment facilities, by designating their sites as strategic development zones (SDZs).
Under part nine of the 2000 Planning Act, an SDZ may be designated if its development is deemed to be of economic or social importance to the State. Intended to clear the way for inward investment, this device would limit the public to objecting only to the principle of what is proposed, rather than the detail.
Not surprisingly, this approach was endorsed by economic consultants Dr Peter Bacon and Associates in their recent report for Celtic Waste. It also suggested the Minister for the Environment should issue a policy directive requiring local authorities to ensure that adequate landfill capacity is available.
Calling for a National Waste Management Agency with executive powers, the report said there was a need for much greater integration of waste management into local, regional and national development plans, including guidance on the "pre-designation" of sites for waste management facilities.
Other key recommendations of the Bacon report include a review of recycling targets to identify how recovered materials will be used. So far, as it says, there has been "too much emphasis" on the separation of waste at source, with little attention paid to what will be done with the recovered material.
Take construction and demolition waste, for example. Though much of it could be crushed for re-use as a supplement to gravel in road construction, the National Roads Authority has been dragging its feet on specifying standards which would allow this to happen; a working group is still looking at it.
The Bacon report also called for implementation of a fully audited British-style waste-tracking system, with an emphasis on duty of care, as well as effective punishment for waste contractors involved in illegal dumping, so that everyone in the sector would be encouraged to operate within the law.
Other recommendations include replacing flat-rate charges for household waste with charges based on weight or volume, to reflect the "polluter pays" principle, and also formalising a system of "disamenity payments" to communities living close to new waste management facilities.
Celtic Waste's interest in all of these matters is fairly transparent - it sees more landfills as a business opportunity. The Bacon report certainly has little to say about waste minimisation and is very dubious, too, about the prospects that recycling targets of up to 45 per cent will actually be achieved.
It maintains regional plans "do not deal with the implications of a situation in which the assumptions are not realised" and cater for no margins of error. Given these "fundamental shortcomings", the strategies remain "largely aspirational", with no public consensus on the way forward.
This is disputed by Mr P.J. Rudden, of consultant engineers MC O'Sullivan, who drafted many of the plans. "Implementation is well under way, particularly kerbside recycling in the major towns and I believe there is a growing consensus that the solution to the problem is along the lines proposed."
He also disagrees with Dr Bacon's conclusion that the need for more landfills had been underestimated. "We took waste-reduction and recycling seriously enough not to overestimate the scale of disposal facilities. Yes, the targets are ambitious, but we've got to aim for them as a first priority," he says.
Mr Rudden is well aware of the argument that any rush to proceed with thermal treatment plants, in particular, could be seen as undermining waste reduction and recycling efforts, but he also accepts there is "still a trust deficit because of the bad reputation of waste management in the past".
What's needed now, according to Ireland's leading expert on waste, is "consistent implementation across the country" of the regional waste plans to reduce both the volume requiring disposal and the "astronomically high" cost of landfill - now running at €129 a tonne (including the new €19 levy).