GREENS DISMAYED AT COUNTY MANAGER'S PERFORMANCE AT OIREACHTAS COMMITTEE MEETING ON ILLEGAL DUMPING IN WICKLOW

"Essentially the County Manager was invited to the meeting to provide the Dail Deputies with an overview of the illegal dumping situation in the county" says councillor de Burca. "In the course of his presentation, the Manager conveyed the impression that the council's resources were adequate to deal with the demands of the ongoing investigations into the illegal dumps around the county. My party believes that this was deeply irresponsible of the Manager, and that he has let the people of Wicklow down very badly" she says.

Councillor de Burca quotes from the submission made by Mr Sheehy to the Oireachtas Committee which said :

"This is a very expensive investigation and has already cost Wicklow County Council more than a million Euro. Considerable staff resources have been devoted to the work and the National Bureau of Criminal Investigations has also deployed very large Garda resources to this problem".

Later on Mr Sheehy was reported as saying : "Lack of resources has not to date been a constraint on the Council investigation. I have allocated whatever resources were necessary to do the job in an effective and efficient manner".

Councillor de Burca reports that she is "astonished" at the Manager's remarks. "Mr Sheehy had a unique opporunity to impress upon the Deputies present the scale and extent of the serious waste crisis in County Wicklow" she says. "He should have been making a plausible case for requesting assistance from the Department of the Environment to deal with the huge amount of investigative and legal work that is involved with these illegal dumps. Instead he gave the impression that the Council's resources were adequate" she says.

The Green Party councillor insists that the Environment Section of the Council is seriously overstretched in trying to respond to all of the illegal dumps that have been identified to date, particularly the massive illegal dumps in West Wicklow. She points out that the staff of the Environmental Section are not in a position to deal with all of the other environmental issues in the county because of the need to concentrate on the illegal dumps.

"I think it is also important to point out that Wicklow County Council does not have all the expertise required to properly investigate the environmental and public health implications of some of these massive dumps " she says. "I have suggested to the Manager that he ask for a number of chemists, hydro-geologists and engineers to be seconded from the EPA or from other local authorities to deal with the ongoing investigations but he appears totally unwilling to do so " she says.

"As far as I am concerned, it is an absolute nonsense to argue that any local authority has the resources to deal with the kind of massive waste crisis that we have in Wicklow without extra support and assistance from Central Government" she argues. "We also have to ask where the million euros that the Council has spent on investigations so far has come from, and what other areas have had to do without that money as a result".

For further information please contact Deirdre de Burca on 086 8061450 or email deburca@wicklowgreens.org.