Cleaning up illegal dumps may exceed the resources available to landowners, contractors or even Wicklow County Council, reports Tim O'Brien

The "catch 22" of illegal dumping in Co Wicklow is that the longer the county council investigates, the larger is the problem it unearths. It is now almost two years since council staff learned of dumping being carried out on a site owned by Clifford Fenton at Coolnamadra, near the Glen of Imaal in west Wicklow. In the intervening period, significant dumps embracing upwards of a million tons of rubbish - some including hospital waste - have been unearthed.

In the last eight weeks alone, at least six new dumps have been discovered on land belonging to Roadstone, a subsidiary of Cement Roadstone Holdings, near Blessington, and the volume of waste there is as yet unknown.

While in the Coolnamadra case, the council secured High Court Orders against Fenton and Dublin Waste, forcing them to organise and pay for the clean up costs, there is increasing concern that other similar actions may not be so successful - and even if they are, the millions of euro involved may exceed the amounts available to the landowners, contractors and ultimately even to Wicklow County Council.

The council's exact "historical record" in relation to the dumps is unclear. But we do know that, from about 1990 to 2000, hundreds of thousands of tons of rubbish were taken in fleets of lorries down country lanes around the village of Blessington, Co Wicklow and dumped in holes in the ground, in disused gravel pits and covered over in fields.

From about 1997, the lorries switched much of the activity from Blessington further south, to the area around Glen of Imaal. Residents of both areas made complaints about lorries damaging roads and - in the case of Whitestown, forwarded details of the lorries, to Wicklow County Council. The file was subsequently lost.

At the same time, illegal dumps were opening up in the north Wicklow area at Fassaroe, Kilmacanogue, Kilpedder, Ashford, Newtownmountkennedy and Roundwood as two factors, the building boom in Dublin and the rapidly increasing cost of waste disposal, took hold.

By the middle of 2001, Wicklow County Council had a list of more than 100 suspect sites, most of them relating to "relatively minor incidents".

Referring to what he described as allegations that the council's staff in the civic offices in Blessington "either saw or should have seen" the dumping taking place, the Wicklow County manager, Eddie Sheehy, pointed out that the offices were completed and occupied only in 2002. Critics were, however, quick to point out that the council's previous office was a stone's throw away, off Blessington Main Street, and dumping involved a cavalcade of lorries dumping day and night over a period of years in what was and is still very much a rural village.

One man who could have assisted the council with its inquiries was the council overseer in west Wicklow, John Mullins Snr, who was based in Blessington until the mid to late 1990s and who then moved to the Baltinglass area. As the council's representative, it would have been up to Mullins to report such traffic. Unfortunately, shortly after the controversy broke in 2001, Mullins died suddenly in tragic circumstances.

Wicklow County Council has not, however, been without its successes in the investigation. In the District Court, Andrew Phibbs was convicted and given three concurrent six-month jail sentences and fined for breaches of the waste Management Act. In the High Court last July, orders were obtained against Dublin Waste and against its directors Louis and Eileen Moriarity, directing them to remove hospital and other wastes at Coolnamadra and remediate the site.

Sheehy said it was "gratifying that the unpleasant work of the investigating team is resulting in penalties which should help to deter others from committing similar offences". Poignant words, given that, within weeks, the council had to petition the High Court to the effect that the penalties were obviously not deterring others from continuing to dump on sites which had already been discovered.

The Labour councillor for west Wicklow, Tommy Cullen, and others have claimed that, at current staffing levels, it could take 10 years to get the number of illegal dumps investigated and cases into court.

Then there is the business of penalties. Sheehy himself quotes the example of the "gate fee" for accepting a 20-ton load of hospital waste for deep burial in Fingal County Council's facility. It was about £2,400 in 2001, while the gate fee for an illegal dump was £90.

Last week, an industry source said that, while the costs of dealing with hazardous waste have actually fallen in the past year, the costs of excavating the waste and remediating the soil as well as the likely sending of the contaminated waste abroad for incineration, were "enormous and in many cases could be a multiple of the value of the land".

While Roadstone may easily afford such costs associated with finds on its 600-acre land holding around the village of Blessington, the company may cite video and picture evidence of the council's own lorries dumping on the land, a factor which may complicate the council's case.

Roadstone has acknowledged separate finds of waste on company lands, while the council refers to "one investigation" now covering the townlands of Dillonsdown, Deerpark and New Paddocks. Finds are up to one kilometre apart, leading to speculation that, if - as the council appears to suggest - this represents one dump, it must be several square kilometres in size.

But, just as the council must be appalled at the scale of the new finds, it found it had to approach the High Court, claiming that one of the illegal dumps which it had already uncovered, the Stephenson site, had secretly resumed operations.

In an affidavit, Sonia Dean, executive engineer with the council, said her own inspections and those of the Environmental Protection Agency had revealed that dumping had resumed.

The incident and the "Mexican stand-off" between the county council and Roadstone comes on top of other difficulties. John O'Reily of Whitestown sent the council a bill for €1 million when the illegal dump on his land was uncovered, claiming that the council had used his dump over a long period. O'Reilly subsequently withdrew his allegations and said he had been coerced into making them by a third party.

Sheehy acknowledged the council may have dumped "inert material" at the Whitestown and Roadstone sites.

It has all led to an atmosphere of suspicion and mistrust at council level. The Labour party deputy leader and health spokeswoman Liz McManus, a council member, is determined that "whatever the outcome of the council's dealings with Roadstone are, they will be made public, and the full extent of the dumping there will be made known before any clean up".

Dick Roche, now minister of state for Europe, was a member of the council until recently, and he has made similar demands and has been particularly critical of Roadstone, commenting that "their see no evil, hear no evil defence means the fairies must have done it".

The Green Party representative Deirdre de Burca has consistently called for the Government to appoint and fund an independent investigator, a move not enthusiastically taken up by the council, which seems keen to keep control of the inquiry.

Criticism of the council's approach has come mainly from councillor Cullen. Sheehy has accused Cullen of "spewing garbage", while Cullen repeatedly claims the council's secretive approach is because it is afraid of its own, largely unknown, "historical record" in relation to the dumps.

As one source close to the investigation commented, "If I were in charge, I wouldn't know whether to give the team a medal or shoot them".