There is no evidence that the Irish authorities have been irresponsible with regard to landfill waste sites, the European Parliament was told yesterday.
Ms Bernie Malone (Labour) was criticising her fellow Dublin MEP, Ms Patricia McKenna, over comments the Green MEP had made regarding reported risks for pregnant women from living near landfill sites.
Ms Malone said a study in the Lancet magazine quoted by Ms McKenna, which referred to dangers for pregnant women living near landfill sites, specified the dangers arose only where they had been used for disposal of hazardous and toxic waste. .
"I would like to reassure Irish citizens that there is no evidence of irresponsibility on the part of Irish authorities on this issue," Ms Malone said.
She said the only two legal cases pending against the Irish Government on the matter concerned the provision of a waste-management plan and failure to supply the European Commission with information regarding hazardous waste installation. Ms McKenna expressed surprise at what Ms Malone had to say. She said she was a member of a local authority long enough to know that hazardous waste had been dumped in landfill sites in Ireland and that without inventories of what waste had been dumped in those sites no one could be certain that they were safe.
She said that only a few years ago there had been a controversy over the illegal dumping by Dublin Corporation of mercury at Dunsink in Finglas. Ms Malone, she said, "seems to be trying to defend Ireland's indefensible position on waste". The Leinster Green MEP, Ms Nuala Ahern, said that toxic and hazardous waste sites, not local authority sites, had been the subject of the Lancet studies.
