Frank McDonald,
Environment Editor
Residents of Ringaskiddy and the wider area of Cork Harbour have been bracing themselves for the long-awaited decision on whether Belgian-owned Indaver Ireland Ltd will be allowed to proceed with plans for a national toxic waste incinerator.
Indaver has been banking on a positive decision by An Bord Pleanála because of the pro-incineration thrust of current national waste policy and the need to avoid exporting the hazardous waste generated in Ireland for disposal or treatment in other EU countries.
And given that a majority of the chemical and pharmaceutical industries operating here are located in the Cork Harbour area, Indaver believes that its choice of location - a 31-acre site in Ringaskiddy - is the best option, not least because of the "proximity principle".
But CHASE (Cork Harbour Alliance for a Safe Environment), which has been leading a vigorous campaign against the plan, is convinced that it has won the moral argument against the use of incineration as an appropriate way to treat hazardous waste because of public health risks.
However, as Indaver lodged its planning application with Cork County Council in advance of the implementation date of new rules under the 2000 Planning Act, the appeals board has been debarred from taking health or environmental factors into consideration in making its decision.
Indaver Ireland's managing director, Mr John Ahern, has been quite frank on the issue of safety. "Nobody can guarantee that something won't go wrong, not even ourselves," he told the public inquiry last September. "But we've built every safety precaution into the design of the plant."
Safety is certainly an issue given that the proposed incinerator would be located directly across the road from the new National Maritime College, currently under construction. Indeed, drums of hazardous waste would be stored in a compound just 25 metres from its entrance.
Indaver first announced its plan in April 2001, and within months residents' associations around Cork Harbour banded together to form CHASE, with the aim of fighting it off. Coffee mornings and other fund-raising activities have helped to keep it going since then.
"We've kept this going by taking time out of our lives," said CHASE's chairwoman, Ms Mary O'Leary, who has four children, three of them teenagers.
"The kids understand what we're at and they support us" - which is why so many of them turned up with placards at the public hearing.
British actor Jeremy Irons, who has a castle near Skibbereen, and celebrity chefs Darina and Myrtle Allen of Ballymaloe House in east Cork, also appeared at the hearing and pleaded for the Indaver plan to be refused permission, arguing that it represented the wrong way for Ireland to go.
A total of 23,000 people signed form letters objecting to the plan after it was lodged with Cork County Council. "No incinerator - enough is enough" say the bumper stickers, in an area where people feel they have already been "dumped on" by dirty industries, such as Irish Steel.