A €200 million waste incinerator in Cork, which was first proposed 25 years ago, is needed now more than ever to cope with a bigger population, the firm behind the plan has said.
Indaver Ireland has recently re-applied for planning permission for the 240,000-tonne waste incinerator at Ringskiddy, in Cork Harbour.
The company’s regional engineering manager Conor Jones said it was needed with Cork city and county populations projected to grow significantly over the next two decades or more.
Cork’s population, both city and county, has grown from 542,866 in 2016 to 584,156 in 2022, Mr Jones said.
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The population is projected to grow to 850,000, according to the Cork Vision 2050 plan, with some 500,000 of these living in the greater Cork Metropolitan area, he added.
“The need for this facility is greater than ever, and it will address the regional imbalance in the location of dedicated thermal treatment facilities for residual municipal waste which is currently centred in the Eastern-Midlands Region,” he said.
He said that since 2020, Ireland has exported on average 300,000 tonnes of residual municipal waste per year to other countries such as Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands for incineration, while an average of 370,000 tonnes of residual municipal was landfilled in Ireland.
Under proposals for the facility, it would cater for both municipal waste and hazardous waste.
Some 10 per cent of the waste will be hazardous, including byproducts from the pharmaceutical sector, which is strongly represented in the Cork region with more than 30 pharma and medical device companies located there.
The incinerator site, which would employ 63 people when operational, would comprise of a main process building with a 70m-high chimney stack and several other buildings including an administration building. The facility’s construction, planned to take 31 months, would see up to 320 people employed.
It is envisaged that the incinerator will operate for 24 hours a day, seven days a week and for an average of 8,000 hours a year. The planning application seeks permission to operate the proposed incinerator for an initial period of 30 years after commissioning.
The application to is a re-activation of a previous application made to An Bord Pleanála in 2016 under the Strategic Infrastructure Development Provisions of the Planning and Development Act 2000, allowing for permission be granted directly by the board for projects designated strategic.
An Bord Pleanála deferred a decision on the application nine times before finally granting it in 2018, but campaign group Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment (Chase) took legal action appealing the decision by An Bord Pleanála to grant permission for the incinerator.
An Bord Pleanála (ABP) had decided to grant Indaver planning for the incinerator by five votes to two after an ABP inspector had recommended refusal for the project in 2017 – the third such time that a planning inspector had recommended refusal after similar decisions in 2004 and 2009.
Chase successfully argued in its appeal in 2021 that ABP’s decision was tainted by objective bias due to the prior involvement of the board’s deputy chairman, Conall Boland, in the decision as he had once worked for a consultancy firm hired by Indaver on the project.
Mr Boland had previously worked for RPS MCOS Consulting Engineers in 2004 when they were engaged by Indaver to make submissions to both Cork City Council and Cork County Council on reviews of their waste management plans.
Mr Justice David Barniville noted that Chase was not alleging actual bias against either Mr Boland or the board but objective bias and he was satisfied the work done by Mr Boland had “a clear, rational and cogent” connection with Indaver’s 2016 application to ABP.
He said that he was satisfied that Chase had established a reasonable objective observer would have a reasonable apprehension the board might not be capable of considering and determining Indaver’s 2016 planning application in an unbiased and impartial manner.
However, the judge remitted the application back to ABP for further consideration and determination and said the planning permission had to start now from 2017 immediately prior to the decision made by ABP deputy chairperson Mr Boland.
The renewed application is for the same design as that submitted in 2016, now costed at €200 million up from €160 million nine years ago, with the proposed incinerator occupying over 11,000 sq m (118,403 sq ft) of the 13.55 hectare side, some 800m (874 yards) east of Ringaskiddy village.
