Chris Dooley reports on a rural community galvanised against a local company's plan to treat huge volumes of farm waste.
You know you've arrived in the Golden Vale when the signs begin to appear. Incineration "kills all in its circle", claims one; "Is that what you want for your children?" asks another.
There is no disguising the depth of feeling in the Cashel area over the proposal by National By-Products to build a meat-and-bonemeal incinerator at its animal-rendering plant in Rosegreen, the first village you meet on the "Cashel-Kilkenny scenic drive".
Doctors, farmers, vets and local residents groups have all come out in large numbers against the proposal, as well as a range of high-profile figures including, rather improbably, the Manchester United manager, Sir Alex Ferguson.
In truth, the state of Roy Keane's knees is more likely to keep Sir Alex awake at night, but the same cannot be said for the racehorse trainer, Mr Aidan O'Brien, whose Ballydoyle stables are located beside the National By-Products plant.
Mr O'Brien has confirmed to The Irish Times that he and his wife, Anne-Marie, intend to leave the area if the proposal is not defeated. "If the incinerator goes ahead we will leave here immediately. We would never bring up our children near such a facility," he said.
Opponents of the project recognise the value of publicity and, with the help of finance from Coolmore Stud, which is also in the area, have mounted the biggest anti-incineration campaign in the State.
In sharp contrast, Mr Jack Ronan, the managing director of National By-Products, sees little point in waging war through the media. A reluctant interviewee, he expresses confidence that An Bord Pleanála and the Environmental Protection Agency will approve the project on its merits.
To emphasise his faith in the safety of his proposal, he produces a glass container with residual ash from a facility in Britain identical to the one his company is proposing. He puts his finger in the vial, removes some ash and places it in his mouth. Voila! Now, what could be more harmless than that?
Incinerators, said the trainer, are proven pollutants that "emit highly toxic substances which are connected to high incidences of a variety of cancers, leukaemia, behaviour disturbances, allergies, asthmas and so on".
He is convinced that such pollutants would have a serious effect on the performance of his horses. "We are dealing with equine athletes, and any contamination of the air that they breathe would be disastrous," he said.
"On top of that, they also would ingest these pollutants including dioxins through the grass they graze. Horses take in these deadly dioxins at a rate 40 times greater than humans."
Mr Ronan, however, claims his opponents are using arguments relating to municipal waste incinerators and applying them, misleadingly, to the facility his company proposes.
"Municipal waste is totally different. With meat and bonemeal, there's nothing in there, so nothing can come out," he claims. He concedes a point repeatedly made by STAC, that National By-Products' environmental track record leaves something to be desired.
The company had been a low-tech, traditional industry, but had spent €6.5 million in the past year on the best available technology, he said.
It had been prosecuted twice by the EPA for offences including pollution of the Moyle river, he said. "If you're doing 55 m.p.h. in a 50 m.p.h. speed limit, you're breaking the law. We weren't doing 110, we were doing 55."
A High Court action over odour nuisance has also been taken against the company by a number of local residents, and is still pending. Mr Ronan said there was an odour problem arising from the land-spreading of water, which is left as a result of the rendering process.
This practice was "unsustainable" and was being replaced by thermal oxidisation, a process which he believed was incineration by another name. A second thermal oxidiser had just been commissioned at the plant, and while the emissions from this process were the same as those from incineration, local people had seen no reason to object.
"The EPA are very happy with this process, which means no pollution and no smell," he said.
To the dismay of those opposing the project, however, past performance cannot be a factor in the EPA deciding whether or not the licence the proposed incinerator.
That's something the chairman of STAC, Mr Séamus Hayes, believes the Government needs to examine.