The environmental organisation, An Taisce, has reacted to the Minister for the Environment's plans to fast-track planning on waste by threatening legal proceedings.
The organisation said it would seek legal advice on the constitutionality of attempts to remove local democracy from the waste-management process.
The Minister, Mr Cullen, told The Irish Times on Sunday that he wanted to fast-track plans for incinerators, landfill sites and other waste management facilities by sending them directly to An Bord Pleanála and eliminating direct local authority involvement.
He described the planning process on waste management as "overdemocratised" and said he did not believe it was adding anything by having so many layers.
His statements resulted in much critical reaction yesterday, led by An Taisce, which said the Minister's approach was "anti-democratic, anti-environmental, backward-looking in every way".
Among political responses yesterday, the Fine Gael spokesman on the environment and local government, Mr Bernard Allen TD, described the Minister's plans as "outrageous and undemocratic".
"Following his proposal to tax householders on the weight of their domestic waste, the Minister has now come forward with another half-baked idea about bypassing local authorities in relation to the development of waste incinerators throughout the country," Mr Allen said.
The present planning laws did not allow such an undemocratic move, he said. An Bord Pleanála, as presently constituted, did not have the resources or the capacity to deal with such issues.
Already, proposals for new industrial and housing developments throughout the country were stalled because of delays at An Bord Pleanála.
"The Minister should instead be making available to local authorities the necessary resources to allow them to get more involved in the reduction, separation and recycling of waste. If these programmes were put in place effectively, the volume of waste that would have to be dealt with through other processes would be reduced substantially," Mr Allen said.
Mr Joe Higgins TD, of the Socialist Party, said the stated intention of the Minister to fast-track the building of incinerators and to pile more refuse charges on householders amounted to a cover-up for the pathetic failure of successive governments to invest in and implement radical policies for dealing with waste.