Galway Corporation reverses incinerator ban

Galway Corporation has tonight voted to reverse an earlier decision banning an incinerator being built on the outskirts of the city. After a heated two-hour debate, the council voted eight to seven in favour of the Connacht Waste Management Plan which provides for an incinerator to be built near Galway City. Four Fianna Fáil and four Progressive Democrat councillors voted for the plan but one Fianna Fáil member, Senator Margaret Cox, voted against it. Margaret Cox said that she had not broken party ranks as a whip had not been imposed. She said that she had voted against the incinerator for personal reasons.

Mayor Martin Quinn said that the Corporation had voted for an incinerator as part of an overall strategy. But it would be seven or eight years before a brick was laid in Galway, he said, and between now and then it might be possible through recycling and minimisation to remove the need for an incinerator.

Labour members on the Council described the decision as an appalling U-turn which they said had been fuelled by the Environment Minister Noel Dempsey. Fianna Fáil's spokesman on the Council, Val Hanley, denied this. The Galway For a Safe Environment Group said that it would still fight the incinerator at every step of the planning process and would make it a very hot election issue. Their spokesman Dr Conchur O Bradaigh said that the decision "represents a total betrayal of the people of Galway, 25,000 of whom lodged objections against this plan last summer".

Earlier this evening, talks to try to resolve the five-day-old dispute which has left the city and county without refuse collection services, ended inconclusively. Council officials are to make another attempt tomorrow to try to come up with a solution to the disposal of the city's industrial and commercial waste. This morning, private waste contractors again picketed the county's only dupmp at Ballinasloe, over the dump's refusal to accept any more commercial waste. The pickets were withdrawn when an offer of talks was made.

The waste contractors' spokesman, Clem Walsh, said that they were looking for a sustainable long term solution to the problem of disposing of the city's commercial waste. Up to now, about 1,500 tons of commercial waste from Galway City is disposed of in the Ballinasloe dump each week. But the dump is rapidly filling up and is due for closure by 2005.

The decision by the contractors to withdraw their pickets from the dump came after an offer of talks by Assistant Manager of Ballinasloe Urban Council, Tom Kavanagh, if the protest at the dump entrance was suspended. The Irish Hotels Federation, which represents 150 hotels and guesthouses in the city, said that the non-collection of waste had been about to cause "enormous damage" to the West's tourist industry and could pose serious health risks to the community.