Managers at three Dublin hospitals yesterday met Wicklow County Council public health officials to be questioned about how medical waste ended up in an illegal dumping site in the county.
Representatives of Blackrock Clinic, St Vincent's University Hospital and the Mater Misericordiae appeared before an emergency meeting of the council after the dump was found at the Glen of Imaal last week.
The unauthorised site, on agricultural land five miles from the village of Donard, contained used body-fluid bags, bloody bandages, used swabs and syringes, and used tubing from operations. Confidential private patient records were also among what is estimated to be 200 tonnes of waste.
The three hospitals are expected to be asked to provide details of their waste records and prove they properly disposed of their contaminated rubbish. If any of the hospitals are implicated, it is likely that they will be asked to produce plans for clearance of the site.
A spokeswoman for Blackrock Clinic, a private health institution, confirmed management officials had gone to the meeting to discuss what was found at the site and to try to establish how it might have got there.
A spokesman for St Vincent's University Hospital, a public institution, said: "We are confident the waste did not come from this hospital."
Mr Martin Cowley, chief executive of the Mater Misericordiae, said officials from the public hospital attended the meeting, but he would be "flabbergasted" if the hospital was the source of the illegally dumped material.
A spokeswoman for the Mater Private said the hospital had not, contrary to some reports, been asked to meet the council.
Acting county secretary Mr Liam Fitzpatrick said: "Three Dublin hospitals have been invited to a meeting in county buildings after we discovered a landfill dump which appeared to contain some waste. We have invited them to the meeting to assess what the waste was and why it was there."
Wicklow County Council said last week it was urgently preparing legal action against those it believed were responsible.
The Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA) has established an inquiry to ascertain the source of the hospital waste.
The ERHA said in a statement that it had "also asked all publicly funded acute hospitals in the eastern region to confirm that the arrangements they have in place for the management and disposal of waste are in compliance with the guidelines of the Department of Health and Children".
Council officials say there are about 200 illegal dumps in Co Wicklow.