The Minister for the Environment, Dick Roche, has said the lack of incinerators in Ireland remained a major gap in the management of waste.
Mr Roche was speaking after the Environmental Protection Agency said Ireland is generally making good progress towards reaching both national and EU waste recycling targets.
However, the environmental watchdog also found that nearly a quarter of Irish households do not use waste collection services, and over 270,000 tonnes of rubbish is unaccounted for.
Mr Roche said Ireland needed a fully integrated waste management infrastructure and could not continue to export waste.
He also said he accepted more progress was needed on diverting biodegradable waste because it accounted for nearly three-quarters of the total amount going to landfill.
The figures emerged this morning in the EPA's National Waste Report for 2004.
In the report, the EPA urged local authorities to find out where the unaccounted waste ends up – while it could have been recycled, the probability is that it was either dumped or burned in back gardens.
Among the report's other findings were that in 2004 there was a 23% increase in recycling municipal waste, 56% of packaging waste was recovered and EU targets will be exceeded.
For three years in a row, the amount of municipal waste going to landfill has been reduced. But it was only by 1% in 2004 and two thirds of municipal waste still ends up in a hole in the ground.
