The Minister for the Environment, Mr Cullen, wants to fast-track plans for incinerators, landfill sites and other waste management facilities by sending them directly to An Bord Pleanála.
He told The Irish Times last night that changes in the planning laws were being examined to eliminate direct local authority involvement in assessing such schemes since they were going to end up with An Bord Pleanála anyway.
Declaring that the planning process on waste management was "over-democratised", he said he did not believe it was "adding anything to it by having so many layers involved". So he wanted to "cut to the chase" by handing it over to An Bord Pleanála.
The Minister made it clear that he personally favoured such a move because it would facilitate a more "fast-track" approach to waste management by reducing the bureaucracy in assessing these proposals.
Thus, the private sector consortium that eventually wins a contract from Dublin City Council to build a thermal treatment plant on the Poolbeg peninsula would not be required to submit its plans to the council for approval under the Planning Act.
In effect, An Bord Pleanála would become a "one-stop shop" for assessing all plans for new waste management facilities, however controversial, and objectors would have to make their case to the board rather than to the relevant local authority.
Mr Cullen said he was awaiting legal advice on whether it would be possible to make such a radical change in the planning laws.
"All I'm trying to do is to secure implementation of the waste management plans. I am not interested in more great debates," he said.
However, he emphasised that he was not seeking to remove the rights of any individual or group to express their views. "They are absolutely entitled to that. It's sacrosanct, but I don't see a need for these views to be expressed at so many different levels."
The Minister said all he was seeking to do was to foreshorten what had already been a long, drawn-out process and to make progress in putting the required facilities in place.
"We're knee-deep in reports - we have to move now to implementation." Mr Cullen said. He was "determined to tie down all the regional waste management strategies into a single national picture this autumn, so that everyone would have clear, concise information about where we're at and what we're doing".
He accepted, however, that it would not be possible to replace flat-rate household waste charges by a charge based on the weight of bags put out for collection, at least until a much wider range of recycling facilities were in place throughout the State.
Saying that charges per weight would more accurately reflect the polluter-pays principle, he denied that they would constitute a subterfuge tax to fund local authorities. In other countries, it had achieved recycling rates of up to 50 per cent.
"The purpose is not to ask people to pay more, but to ask them to reduce their waste. And I believe that if people see that a genuine effort is being made to put recyling facilities in place, they would accept it and recycling would become completely natural," The Minister said.
He would be announcing a new grant scheme for the provision of recycling facilities in the autumn, following the adoption of all of the regional waste management plans - in the case of the south-east, by the Wexford and Waterford county managers.
