Madam, - The planning application for a national toxic waste incinerator in Ringaskiddy is with An Bord Pleanála at the moment. While acknowledging we have a waste problem, I ask if we are mad to be even looking at incineration as a waste management solution. While the niceties of planning laws and waste management policies and theories of the safety of incineration are being discussed, it seems to me to be common sense to avoid the problems inflicted on other countries by incinerators, while we still can.
Is it good planning to allow incinerators into an agricultural country which is the source of some of the least polluted food in the world? Is it good planning to build a most enormous toxic incinerator in the middle one of the finest harbours in the world? Is it good planning to introduce incinerators when more enlightened countries are closing them down and banning new ones? And when alternatives for waste management and reduction are becoming more available, more economic, and more widely used?
The spectre of Askeaton haunts us who live around Cork Harbour. - Yours, etc.,
NATASHA HARTY, Jamesbrook, Midleton, Co Cork.