ONE OF the southwest’s main waste operators, who has been operating a waste transfer and dry recyclable plant without planning permission in a rural area near Listowel for the past seven years, has narrowly avoided jail.
Eoghan McEnery, director of South West Bins Limited, Church Street, Listowel, agreed to give a sworn undertaking on Friday at Killarney Circuit Court to shut down the site.
The court heard of complaints by residents as part of an application by Kerry County Council to jail him for breach of a previous order.
Mr McEnery took the stand to swear to stop accepting material within a week, at his plant at Carhooeragh, Kilmorna. He also agreed to remove the site’s weighbridge within a fortnight. He was to shut down the plant by October, Judge Carroll Moran told him.
The company is a major player in the waste business in the Kerry-Clare-Limerick region, with a number of legal transfer sites and thousands of customers, previous sittings have heard. However, it has never received planning permission for its Listowel site.
“You are very near the edge,” Judge Moran told him.
Liz Murphy, for the council, said Mr McEnery had been ordered by the court in November to be out of the site by May 31st.
Tom Rice, defending, said most of the material had been removed from the site.