More than 1,200 cases of illegal fuel laundering and waste dumping have been dealt with by local authorities South of the Border over the past five years, Minister for the Environment Alan Kelly said.
The issue was raised at a recent meeting of the North-South Ministerial Council in Armagh when a detailed report on the problem by Senator Paul Coghlan was discussed.
In a report to the British Irish Parliamentary Assembly in February, Mr Coghlan detailed the scale of the illegal cross-border trade worth hundreds of millions of euro a year and called for new cross-border task force to combat it.
Water supply
Mr Coghlan will on Monday address the members of Louth County Council about the need for a new approach to the problem, which has had a direct impact on the water quality in the county in recent years.
In response to a recent Dáil question, Mr Kelly said approximately 1,200 incidents of diesel laundering and waste dumping had been dealt with by local authorities to date.
The majority of the clean-up operations had taken place in Louth and Monaghan, with 596 and 509 sites, respectively. Similar clean-up operations had also been carried out in Counties Cavan, Donegal, Offaly, Meath and Waterford.
The Minister said since 2011 more than €5 million had been allocated to local authorities by his department to deal with the problem, with almost €4 million of that being spent in Louth.
“The illegal deposition of waste material arising from diesel laundering activities presents the local authorities with major difficulties, as the task of cleaning up the material needs to be dealt with to avoid threats to the environment.
Tar-like chemical
“The laundering process requires the use of chemicals such as sulphuric acid and bleaching agents and results in a waste byproduct, a tar-like chemical compound or sludge, with significant potential for environmental pollution, particularly in relation to watercourses,” said Mr Kelly.
He said a complete solution to the problem must involve effective and co-ordinated enforcement of the law from both a revenue and waste management perspective.
“In that context, my department continues to liaise with representatives of the Office of the Revenue Commissioners, the local authorities concerned and the EPA’s office of environmental enforcement to seek to identify more effective enforcement solutions, and these engagements will continue.
“This multi-agency approach whereby all of the agencies, working within their particular remit, bring their particular skills, expertise and powers to the task at hand represents the best approach to tackling such irresponsible and dangerous environmental crime,” he said.
Strong co-operation
Mr Kelly maintained there was strong and active co-operation between the relevant enforcement authorities on both sides of the Border, involving An Garda Síochána, the Police Service of Northern Ireland and other enforcement agencies.
“Given the likely origin of at least some of the material from Northern Ireland, there is a clear need to ensure that efforts to tackle the issue and support remediation measures have full cross-border support,” he said.
Mr Kelly added his department has held discussions with the Northern Ireland authorities on the need to develop a mechanism for dealing with waste from cross-border diesel washings which would be factored into the overall discussions on waste repatriation.
He pointed to recent media reports about pollution discharges into the River Fane system in the North, the source of the drinking water supply for Dundalk.
