The Environmental Protection Agency has asked local authorities to carry out a trawl of their records in an attempt to clamp down on the operations of a Northern Ireland businessman, believed to be behind the country's biggest cross-Border waste-smuggling and illegal dumping operation.
The investigation is part of a series of measures undertaken by a cross-Border taskforce on illegal dumping, involving the EPA, gardaí from the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation, Northern Ireland environment officials and the Police Service of Northern Ireland, and the businessman is the main focus of the investigation.
It is illegal to transport commercial and household waste across the Border, except for recycling.
Yesterday officials from the Office for Environmental Enforcement began briefing local authority officials to ask them to identify any companies or individuals linked to the businessman who may have waste collection permits which they use to facilitate the smuggling.
The EPA is anxious that these permits be revoked. The businessman and his associates are using a number of companies and have obtained waste permits for different regions of the Republic.
The Irish Times has identified at least three permits which allow them to operate in the Dublin region, the west of Ireland and the south-east. These are now under review. With landfill costs running at up to €250 a tonne in the Republic, millions of euro can be made through illegal waste, even by transporting it to Scotland, where landfill charges are one-tenth of those in the Republic.
In the smuggling operation, trucks belonging to the businessman and his associates collect loads of between 25 and 35 tonnes in 40ft trailers from waste operators in the Republic. The operators pay the businessman less than half what it would cost to dump the load in a legal landfill in the Republic.
Investigators in the North also identified trucks belonging to the businessman as having dumped in one of the largest illegal dumps uncovered in Northern Ireland, Tyrone Waste Recycling near Cookstown, Co Tyrone.
EPA officials obtained documentary evidence that Waterford Utilities Ltd, which was convicted by the EPA last year of illegally sending waste to Northern Ireland, was using the services of a company belonging to the Northern businessman to transport the waste. Following the conviction, Waterford Utilities Ltd has stopped sending waste to Northern Ireland.
The EPA has prosecutions pending against two more firms in the south-east for illegal shipments to Northern Ireland, both of which are believed to have been using the services of the illegal operator.