Sir, – The remediation of Cork Harbour’s Haulbowline Island toxic landfill cleaned up nine hectares of the heavily contaminated former Irish Steel site and provided the public with a much appreciated park.
The restoration, however, only covered the East Tip, and not the remaining 11 hectares of the former site, including the site of the mill itself and its subterranean sumps and drains, the area of heaviest contamination. These 11 hectares remain fenced off and unremeditated. While promised by Simon Coveney many times when he was minister for agriculture, no application has even been made to the Environmental Protection Agency to complete the necessary works and remediate this area, which bounds the Naval Yard.
According to Charlie McConalogue, the current Minister for Agriculture, in a response to a written parliamentary question on November 3rd, 2020, “Construction work on the East Tip site commenced in October 2017 and remediation works are complete with the project now in a maintenance phase. The total expenditure incurred by my Department (including expenditure commissioned by Cork County Council acting as my agents for the project and reimbursed through the Department) to the end of 2019 is €25,034,676.”
The recently published Oireachtas Committee of Public Accounts Examination of the 2019 and 2020 Appropriation Accounts states: “the Government has spent €158 million on fixing up 122 landfill sites, including €52.4 million on the remediation of a former industrial site at Cork harbour”.
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How did the costs double after the project had been completed? – Yours, etc,
TONY LOWES,
Friends of the
Irish Environment,
Eyeries, Co Cork.