Labour's spokesman on the environment, Mr Eamon Gilmore, said new studies commissioned by the Government into any health implications of landfill sites were designed to give "scientific comfort" to the Minister when he announced the opening of an incinerator.
The study announced last week will be commissioned by the Health Research Board, an independent body which funds medical and health research for the Government, and is expected to be completed by early next year.
The study had no connection with the British Medical Journal paper, a spokesman for the Department of the Environment said.
Mr Gilmore said the type of study proposed would not examine old landfill sites which had never been subject to the current, more stringent licensing requirements.
"Until the 1986 Waste Management Act, there was no legislation at all covering landfill sites. What was happening was that local authorities were finding a field or a hole in the ground and literally everything went into it, including toxic waste. We don't know what went into them."
Ms Deirdre Clune, Fine Gael spokeswoman on the environment, said the study of landfill sites was an "election ploy". However, she welcomed the fact that the Minister was "at last listening to the concerns of residents" who lived beside landfill sites.
Mr Trevor Sargent, of the Green Party, said the BMJ study would not be the first time health concerns had been raised about landfill sites. Doctors near a dump in Ballinasloe had reported problems for a number of years, he said. "I would simply say that this is in line with research that's been carried out elsewhere."
Medical personnel, environmental campaigners and antidump groups all welcomed the news that further studies are to be conducted into the effects of landfill and incineration.
They were cautious, however, about jumping to conclusions regarding yesterday's report indicating slightly higher levels of congenital birth defects in areas close to landfill sites in Britain.
Dr James Reilly, a member of the Eastern Regional Health Authority, welcomed any further studies on the effects of landfill. Dr Reilly, who is also chairman of the GP committee of the Irish Medical Organisation, lives in north Co Dublin where the landfill issue has caused huge controversy in recent years.
He said he believed there was certainly a higher incidence of asthma in the Lusk area, close to the Ballealy landfill site.
"I would be cautious because I haven't seen the study," he said. "There is no comprehensive evidence at the moment that dumps are the cause of any of these problems. But I think it would be equally wrong to say they are not."