Ireland- Greens in incineration storm

In the Dail today John Gormley and the Green party came under sustained attack from FG and Labour on the incineration issue.

The decision of An Bord Pleanala to give the go ahead to the Poolbeg incinerator has exposed the Green Party to ridicule. John Gormley and other apologists for the Green Party have endeavoured to wriggle out of the problem. They are trapped by their own political promises and by their failure to negotiate a Programme for Government that would scupper incineration as a tool of Government environmental policy.
The Programme for Government is at least 95% FF policy with a few sops to the Green Party.
FF has successfully emasculated the Green Party. The Greens in opposition would have savaged FF on this issue. FF cannot believe its good fortune.

The following is taken from John Gormley's website:
“The record shows that the government voted down a Green Party motion to stop the incinerator. We have been very clear that in government this incinerator will not go ahead.
“I believe that the planning case against this incinerator is unanswerable. The site selection process was flawed, the traffic impact would be disastrous and, most importantly, there is no need for this massive facility. However, in the past we have seen cases where the An Bord Pleanála’s inspector recommended against the project on planning grounds, only to have this decision overturned by the Bord on the basis of ‘government policy’. This is what happened with the incinerator at Ringaskiddy, and more recently with the redevelopment of Lansdowne Road stadium.

“A recent independent report on waste management in Ireland found that our reliance on incineration is in fact a major impediment to meeting our targets under the EU Landfill Directive. This report, by leading European environmental consultants Eunomia, found that alternatives to incineration could be put in place more quickly and at less cost. We urgently need a change in Government policy, otherwise we will be lumbered with a collection of massive incinerators, which, in the words of Dr Dominic Hogg, the author of the Eunomia report, will ‘crowd out recycling options’.

There is a big grin on FF faces. Incineration has gone through with the Green Party in power.