Dublin city councillors last night overwhelmingly voted to reject a report that recommends proceeding with the Poolbeg incinerator and condemned as “anti-democratic” the process involved in deciding the project’s fate.

A total of 52 councillors voted to reject the report brought to the chamber by city manager Owen Keegan, with just two backing it and one abstaining.

The special sitting, called last last night to discuss the project, was described by councillors as a “disgrace”, a “sham” and a “charade” on the basis that elected officials are blocked from preventing the incinerator going ahead as waste management projects are decided at an executive level by the city manager and chief executives of the four local authorities in Dublin.

Last week the National Development Finance Agency issued a value-for-money certificate for a 600,000-tonne waste-to- energy plant, which had been subjected to numerous financial and legal delays.

Mr Keegan told councillors the agency’s approval was the final hurdle before the council, which has had planning permission for the plant since 2007, could give the go-ahead to Covanta, the US firm contracted to build and run it. He said a decision would now have to be taken “one way or the other”. However, he denied that a decision had already been made to give the project the green light and insisted that no such move would be made until the councils in all four local authorities had discussed the latest report.

“This is one of the saddest meetings I can recall,” said Cllr Dermot Lacey. “We all know this is a charade. I doubt the city manager has any intention of listening to us.” He added that the council had voted against the Poolbeg project on more than 30 occasion since the 1990s.

Dún Laoghaire-Rathdown councillors also rejected the report but Fingal councillors gave it their backing.

Meanwhile, the Department of the Environment dismissed a Green Party claim that the status of the incinerator was to be changed from a regional to a national waste management plan.

New contract Party leader Eamon Ryan said yesterday there was one "major difference" in the new contract

presented by Dublin City Council and which Mr Keegan is considering signing.

“This is now going to be a national, rather than a Dublin, incinerator. All the planning up to this stage was on the understanding that waste would be treated on a regional basis. The public policy position seems to have changed without any comment or input from [Minister for Environment Alan Kelly].”

He called on Mr Kelly to comment on the change and to indicate if it squared with the long- held Labour policy of recycling and was "not part of a national waste management plan".

Referring to the Waste Management Act 1996, a department spokesman said implementing the plan was the statutory responsibility of local authorities and not Government. Responding to Mr Ryan's demand for Mr Kelly to respond, he said that, under that Act, the Minister was "precluded from exercising any power or control in relation to the performance by a local authority, in particular circumstances, of a statutory function vested in it".