About 400 people marched through the centre of Dublin yesterday calling for the closure of Balleally dump, on Rogerstown Estuary, and for the abandonment of plans to extend it.
Organised by Lusk Community Council, the protesters marched from Parnell Square to Leinster House shouting "Lusk Says No!" A black banner in front, flanked by two men with wheelie-bins, said: "26 years is long enough".
The demonstrators gathered in heavy rain behind crash barriers on Molesworth Street, facing Leinster House. They are threatening to run their own candidate in the Dublin North by-election.
They were met by a Fianna Fail delegation consisting of the Minister for the Marine, Dr Woods; the Minister of State for Science and Technology, Mr Noel Treacy, and a local TD and county councillor, Mr G.V. Wright. Eight-year-old Barry Mulholland, of Newhaggard, Lusk, handed them a card he had written to the Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, which featured a colour photograph show- ing rubbish on the shoreline of Rogerstown Estuary.
"The dump stinks," said his message. "The dump is polluting the estuary and the ducks are dying. The wildlife is dying because the dump is their (sic). All of our swans have left the estuary. Please close the dump and please don't make it any bigger."
Senator Sean Ryan, who is hoping to regain his Dail seat in the by-election, walked all the way with the protesters. "I support the people of Rush and Lusk in this. Any idea of turning Balleally into a super-dump is opposed by Labour. We want it closed," he said.
Mr Trevor Sargent, Green Party TD for Dublin North, also took part in the demonstration. He said the need to extend Balleally could be set aside if householders were required to make compost of their organic waste and builders had to recycle their construction debris.
???ail adjournment debate on the issue, calling on the Minister for the Environment to reassure the people of Lusk, Rush, Donabate and Portrane that the Balleally dump would close as promised at the end of this year.
The protesters are relying on a sworn affidavit from July 1996 made by Mr Frank Coffey, senior executive engineer, on behalf of the three local authorities in Co Dublin in the Kill dump High Court case, that Balleally was "to close [on the] 31st of December, 1997".
Mr Michael Hartnett, head of Fingal County Council's environment department, has said this statement was qualified by the phrase "at current input rates". In other words, it took no account of any plan to extend the landfill site at Balleally.
Last September, the council unveiled its controversial plan to triple the size of the dump and extend its life by a further 15 to 20 years by acquiring 370 acres of land to the north. The subsequent public furore forced the council to put this plan on ice.
