This is my Irish Examiner column from this weekend...
WHEN I was a child growing up in suburban Galway in the late 1970s and early 1980s, disposing of our waste was a relatively simple matter.
The mindset back then was encapsulated by the catchy slogan of one of the private waste disposal companies: “Let O’Brien do the shifting”.
You threw the lot out. Except for milk bottles, which you left out each morning, and soft drink bottles for which you got a tiny deposit back.
But everything else went out to a dump in Carrowbrowne in the north of the city. And by everything I mean everything.
I remember my father loading up an old fridge on a trailer and us making the journey out the Headford Road to dump it at the tiphead.
Even then, like the milk bottles, there was a form of recycling taking place as Travellers made a living by sifting through the rubbish for copper, other metals and reusables.
The mindset changed in Galway during the late 1990s when the city went mad for recycling. Every time I made the trip home, members of my family seemed to have added yet another for-recycling container to the dolly mixture of bins outside the front door. Where Galway led, everyone else has followed since then, except for Carlow and Mayo.
The latest figures, released in August this year, showed that both counties had shamefully low recycling rates of less than 7% each in 2005.
By contrast, Galway city’s rate for 2005 was an impressive 47%.
Dublin city lagged behind at 13%.
Best of all was Longford with 57%.
The good news about the sea- change is that the recycling target of 35% set for 2012 has already been surpassed. And so it is likely that the new recycling target for 2012 of 50% will be achieved.
That means that of the projected 3.4 million tonnes of waste that is projected to be generated in 2012, only half, or 1.7m tonnes, will go onto the next stage of the process.
There is bad news though and it also applies to another shift of culture.
During the 1990s — when it became increasingly apparent that landfills and super-dumps were no longer sustainable — the Fianna Fáil-led government began casting around for alternatives.
They looked to Europe and what they saw was incineration.
The current national waste strategy set out ambitious plans for eight regional thermal treatment plants around the country.
Now there has been another fundamental change of mindset and that has coincided with the Greens arriving in government for the first time.
In opposition, the party was a fierce opponent of incineration, and I think it’s fair to say that John Gormley’s opposition was given an added intensity by the fact that the biggest facility of them all was earmarked for Poolbeg, the visual focal point of his own constituency.
The political headache for the Green Party is that the new political shift has arrived too late — nine years too late by most estimates. No matter how gargantuan his efforts, no matter how persuasive his arguments, no matter how potent his promise, time is not on Gormley’s side.
For a worryingly high number of their core issues, the Greens arrived minutes too late — the train had already left the station.
Within a short time of arriving at the Department of Environment, Gormley flurried into a series of different actions. He commissioned a review of the national waste strategy and a new one may see the light of day by early autumn of next year.
He also parlayed up the Programme on Government’s commitments in relation to waste management. If you look at the document that was brokered between FF and the Greens, you will see all the key phrases. The three Rs (reduction, re-use and recycling) would be cornerstones and for the first time there was a concrete commitment to the introduction of Mechanical Biological Treatment (MBT) facilities.
Gormley took this and ran with it, as was his right as Greens’ leader and as Minister for the Environment.
He made a presentation to Cabinet and afterwards was emboldened to proclaim that incineration was no longer the cornerstone of Irish waste policy.
The assessment wasn’t exactly shared by Fianna Fáil or by Bertie Ahern, who has conceded we may have four or more incinerators.
Then in October, Gormley got experts within his department to estimate the amount of residual waste that would be left for incineration if recycling was at 50% and if MBT was fully operational.
The figures were startling.
Out of total municipal waste of 3.4m tonnes a year in 2012, you could whittle the incineration-only stuff down to a mere 400,000 tonnes.
Suddenly, we no longer need eight incinerators; no more than two.
The problem is that it has come too late in the day.
An Bord Pleanála said it could only rely on the written and extant policy and existing laws. It granted planning permission to Poolbeg. And within days, the Environmental Protection Agency granted it a licence, albeit with 109 conditions.
Despite this latest sea-change, despite MBT coming on stream, despite higher recycling rates, incineration is a reality that the Greens can only fight a fierce rearguard battle against.
Already it’s certain that four will come on stream — in Co Meath, Poolbeg and the twin burners in Ringaskiddy.
And unfortunately for them, the Greens’ continuing campaign against them may be as futile as Don Quixote’s tilting at windmills.
Showing posts with label incineration.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label incineration.. Show all posts
Monday, November 26, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
INSIDE POLITICS - TIME IS RUNNING OUT FOR THIS GOVERNMENT
THERE are four years, eight months and six days left until the next general election.
That means only one thing — the Government has left it too late to save their skins. They are toast already.
Ah yes, you say. A resurgent Fine Gael will become even more resurgent and will wipe the floor with them. Ermmm, no.
By the way they are shaping up so far, Fine Gael look like they will be merely spectators to the Government’s demise. I was speaking to a senior Fine Gael backroom person during the week and asked him about the state of play of its strategic planning for the next five years.
The answer I got was that there isn’t a strategy, not yet. The reasons?
It’s only a couple of months since a tough election. The new front bench needs to bed itself in. Give it a bit of time.
It was — and I didn’t quibble — a reasonable explanation. But it was also wrong.
Just as a week can be a long time in politics, a five-year term can be a short time in politics. And we have seen a couple of examples in the past week of Fine Gael spokespeopleopposing just for the sake of opposing and offering no cohesive or original proposals of its own (and before you correct me, the otherwise smart Charlie Flanagan’s suggestion to call in the army was not original).
And so in the new Dáil term, we have seen FG take up where it left off before the election. We don’t know if it’s still relying on the three pillars on which it fought the election campaign — health, crime and value for money — but it seems to be. And that’s a mistake.
There’s a school of thought within FG that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it — continue with the strategy that won it 20 seats and sure, won’t it yield even more?
A couple of weeks ago, FG’s young blade Leo Varadkar wrote in a posh newspaper arguing that far from trumpeting its success, FG should be flagellating itself for failing to win the election.
The campaign (ie the superficial razzmatazz) was professional, but wasn’t enough. “We did not win the policy debates. We showed an unwillingness to take clear positions. We did not demonstrate competence to run the economy.”
As an example, he said, the party, by concentrating on the narrow issue of stamp duty (pandering to a skewed and perverse Sunday Independent campaign), abandoned imaginative plans for a 30% income tax for middle earners. To that end, they could learn from the flair that Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne has shown in terms of policy and presentation.
Mr Varadkar’s argument that Fine Gael “will have to look like modern Ireland” sounds like it comes straight out of David Cameron’s rulebook.
FG needs to do all of those things. But already, it’s beginning to look like it might not need to bother. The PDs already look like goners. There’s no dynamic for change within FF, which means that Brian Cowen and others will bide their time even if Bertie Ahern stays on until 2011.
If that happens, whoever succeeds him will be leading Fianna Fáil into opposition.
And the Green Party? The incinerator debate this week underlined the innate weakness of its position in Government. The media and opposition honed in not on John Gormley’s argument that Ireland will need two rather than eight incinerators, but on his tacit acceptance that incinerators will be needed in the first place. That’s a big concession.
Its biggest enemy will be time. In the Programme for Government, the Greens got a commitment to an international review of national waste policy. And it’s been agreed. That’s fine. But it won’t be completed until 2009. And by the time they’ve gone through the hoops of approval, procurement and delivery, it will be — well, way beyond 2012.
And with an economy beginning to feel the squeeze, its own big flagship issues — the annual 3% reduction in carbon emissions; the big push towards renewable and alternative forms of energy — will encounter resistance from FF ministers.
The Greens know that FF has red lines and is not prepared to cross them. So many of what the Greens want is predicated on reviews, reports, promises and vague aspirations (stuff that can be kicked into the blue yonder). Green ministers and their advisers are still talking naively about how nice FF ministers have been to them. But in technical terms that’s called a honeymoon period.
If they don’t start picking a couple of fights with the Big Beasts of FF soon, they’ll find themselves with nothing tangible to show. There are four years, eight months and five days left. But if they don’t start moving, it will be too late.
That means only one thing — the Government has left it too late to save their skins. They are toast already.
Ah yes, you say. A resurgent Fine Gael will become even more resurgent and will wipe the floor with them. Ermmm, no.
By the way they are shaping up so far, Fine Gael look like they will be merely spectators to the Government’s demise. I was speaking to a senior Fine Gael backroom person during the week and asked him about the state of play of its strategic planning for the next five years.
The answer I got was that there isn’t a strategy, not yet. The reasons?
It’s only a couple of months since a tough election. The new front bench needs to bed itself in. Give it a bit of time.
It was — and I didn’t quibble — a reasonable explanation. But it was also wrong.
Just as a week can be a long time in politics, a five-year term can be a short time in politics. And we have seen a couple of examples in the past week of Fine Gael spokespeopleopposing just for the sake of opposing and offering no cohesive or original proposals of its own (and before you correct me, the otherwise smart Charlie Flanagan’s suggestion to call in the army was not original).
And so in the new Dáil term, we have seen FG take up where it left off before the election. We don’t know if it’s still relying on the three pillars on which it fought the election campaign — health, crime and value for money — but it seems to be. And that’s a mistake.
There’s a school of thought within FG that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it — continue with the strategy that won it 20 seats and sure, won’t it yield even more?
A couple of weeks ago, FG’s young blade Leo Varadkar wrote in a posh newspaper arguing that far from trumpeting its success, FG should be flagellating itself for failing to win the election.
The campaign (ie the superficial razzmatazz) was professional, but wasn’t enough. “We did not win the policy debates. We showed an unwillingness to take clear positions. We did not demonstrate competence to run the economy.”
As an example, he said, the party, by concentrating on the narrow issue of stamp duty (pandering to a skewed and perverse Sunday Independent campaign), abandoned imaginative plans for a 30% income tax for middle earners. To that end, they could learn from the flair that Tory shadow chancellor George Osborne has shown in terms of policy and presentation.
Mr Varadkar’s argument that Fine Gael “will have to look like modern Ireland” sounds like it comes straight out of David Cameron’s rulebook.
FG needs to do all of those things. But already, it’s beginning to look like it might not need to bother. The PDs already look like goners. There’s no dynamic for change within FF, which means that Brian Cowen and others will bide their time even if Bertie Ahern stays on until 2011.
If that happens, whoever succeeds him will be leading Fianna Fáil into opposition.
And the Green Party? The incinerator debate this week underlined the innate weakness of its position in Government. The media and opposition honed in not on John Gormley’s argument that Ireland will need two rather than eight incinerators, but on his tacit acceptance that incinerators will be needed in the first place. That’s a big concession.
Its biggest enemy will be time. In the Programme for Government, the Greens got a commitment to an international review of national waste policy. And it’s been agreed. That’s fine. But it won’t be completed until 2009. And by the time they’ve gone through the hoops of approval, procurement and delivery, it will be — well, way beyond 2012.
And with an economy beginning to feel the squeeze, its own big flagship issues — the annual 3% reduction in carbon emissions; the big push towards renewable and alternative forms of energy — will encounter resistance from FF ministers.
The Greens know that FF has red lines and is not prepared to cross them. So many of what the Greens want is predicated on reviews, reports, promises and vague aspirations (stuff that can be kicked into the blue yonder). Green ministers and their advisers are still talking naively about how nice FF ministers have been to them. But in technical terms that’s called a honeymoon period.
If they don’t start picking a couple of fights with the Big Beasts of FF soon, they’ll find themselves with nothing tangible to show. There are four years, eight months and five days left. But if they don’t start moving, it will be too late.
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