Dublin local authorities are to announce the location of a major new landfill for the Dublin area shortly after the local elections.
The site will be one of six in the outlying areas of Dublin under investigation for suitability for the landfill, which will take upwards of 150,000 tonnes of waste a year from the greater Dublin area.
Four of the sites under investigation are in the Fingal area, while a further two are in the Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown region.
Since mid-February, staff from Fingal County Council have been carrying out extensive technical surveys on the sites, including the collection of environmental and ecological data.
Five private firms have now submitted expressions of interest to build and operate the landfill.
Plans for the landfill have already seen considerable delays after Fingal County Council had to seek a Circuit Court order to gain access to the lands involved to carry out site investigations on the four in its area.
It is believed that because of lower land prices, distance from major urban centres, and motorway access, one of the Fingal sites will be identified.
The sites were originally identified five years ago on a list of eight possible sites for a new landfill for Dublin as part of the waste management plan for the capital.
Two sites, one close to the airport, have now been removed from the list as being unsuitable.
The four Dublin local authorities, who are steering the plan, are now under enormous pressure to proceed with the planned landfill as quickly as possible, with the capital facing a major waste crisis within four years.
It is one of a number of major waste projects identified in the Dublin waste management strategy, including an incinerator and two large biological composting facilities, to avert a major waste crisis in 2008.
Two landfills - Kill in Co Kildare and Ballealy in North Dublin - which take 750,000 tonnes of the capital's domestic and commercial waste, are due to close in 2007 and 2008 respectively.
There is now increasing concern that much of the planned new infrastructure will not be ready by that time.
The incinerator, planned for Poolbeg, is still in pre-planning stage, and a firm has yet to be selected to build the 100 million facility under a public-private partnership scheme.
The two biological treatment/composting facilities identified for Ballyogan in south Dublin and Kilshane Cross in Fingal, due for opening next year, are still at pre-planning stage.
Most major waste infrastructure projects have taken between two and four years to clear the planning stage, and a further one to three years to construct.
However, senior officials from the local authorities remain confident that the crisis will be averted.Dublin City Council assistant manager, Mr Matt Twomey, said that the recycling rate for the city was now at 20 per cent and it was hoped this would be 49 per cent by the end of 2006.
Mr Twomey is chairing the steering group of local authority officials which is implementing the waste plan for the greater Dublin area.
"Vegetable matter and garden waste accounts for 33 per cent of the waste going to landfill at the moment, and this will change with the opening of the biological treatment facilities at Ballyogan and Kilshane," he said.