A controversial plan to build an incinerator as part of a new waste management strategy for the southeast is to proceed despite Wexford County Council's decision to reject it.
The South East Regional Authority was told yesterday by consultants that there was no reason the other five local authorities in the region, which have all approved the plan, should not go ahead and implement it.
But the proposal has brought concerned residents out in their thousands at public meetings and councillors in several local authorities are likely to come under pressure to reverse their earlier decision and reject the plan.
A public information campaign is to be launched by the authority to try to convince the public of the benefits of the proposal.
The director of the authority, Mr Tom Byrne, accepted there were "a lot of concerns" about the proposal.
He pointed out that the strategy, drawn up by consultants Fehily Timoney & Co, involved a range of other measures for dealing with waste, including recycling, reuse, minimisation and prevention.
It would involve considerable investment in providing "ecoparks and civic amenity sites" throughout the region, he added. "It's one thing to have recycling targets, but the facilities to enable people to meet them have to be put in place. There's a big job of work to be done."
Even with those other methods in operation, however, the strategy involves disposing of most of the 350,000 tonnes of waste produced in the southeast each year by incineration, at a site yet to be identified.
A campaign against the strategy developed in Wexford after a French-led consortium, which included Iarnrod Eireann and an ESB subsidiary, ESB International, announced plans to locate it at the Great Island power station near Campile. The proposal was withdrawn as it was deemed premature, but residents feared it would re-emerge during the tendering process.
Wexford county councillors voted by 19 to one this month to reject the strategy. Mr Byrne said it was not yet clear whether Wexford could buy into other elements of the strategy or had excluded itself entirely.
It was the view of the consultants that "the plan is still viable for the remaining five counties."
The steering committee is made up of officials from the six local authorities in the region, as well as representatives of the Department of the Environment and Local Government and of the Environmental Protection Agency.
