Recently I had the chance to have a chat with Minister of the Environment, Heritage and Local Government, John Gormley TD in that fine Gandon building on the Liffey, the Custom House.

John contested his first general election in 1989. In 1991 he was elected to Dublin City Council and was Lord Mayor of Dublin from 1994 to 1995. In June 1997 he was elected to the Dáil and in June 2007, after the last general election when he was re-elected for Dublin South East, he was appointed as Minister for the Environment, Heritage and Local Government.

I must confess that I have some interest in Green issues myself and from mid-1996 I canvassed for John Gormley in the run up to the 1997 election when he won a seat over former TD and Táiniste Michael McDowell by 27 votes after a protracted week-long count at the RDS.

I had been conscious of environmental concerns from the time I was in architecture school in London during the 80s and 90s, and when I returned back to Dublin in the mid 90s local politics and the environment in Dublin 4 hit home with a fight by John against an Incinerator company in Ringsend called Bio-Burn.

I was drawn to supporting John after he was taken to Court by that company to stop him from speaking out against their activities. So I was pleased to see Minister Gormley as he is now, in his office, his career has progressed but there is a lot to do and problems to deal with.

I drew the Minister’s attention to criticism from opposition parties about the Incinerator on the Poolbeg getting the go-ahead from An Bord Pleanála without him being directly able to prevent it. Recently, Fine Gael councillor Paddy McCartan had circulated a leaflet with a quote from himself from before the last election on the subject of the Incinerator which goes on to attempt to demonstrate something of a change in position now that he’s in Government, and also that Fine Gael TD Lucinda Creighton’s web site quotes him as saying in April 2007, “We have been very clear that in Government this incinerator will not go ahead.”

I gave John the opportunity to reply to this. “When other political parties are using this as a political stick to beat me with, and you’ll probably get a lot more of this coming up to elections, you have to look at their particular record and you go back, first of all, to the legislation which was introduced, the Waste Management Act 1996, and you ask yourself who voted for that?

Who voted for the provision of Incineration to be included in that and you look down the list and look at the amendments that were put down by the Green Party that were to exclude Incineration and you find, and this is a very important point, you find that Fine Gael, Fianna Fáil, the Labour Party and the PDs all voted against the Green Party.”

He continued, “Then you go on to 1998 and you find that the Dublin City Waste plan which went to the Council, and this is still quoted by the Council as to why they have an endorsement to go ahead with this project; so who voted for that plan, who put down the amendment again to stop that plan going ahead which included Incineration but the Green Party? Who voted against that plan and who voted for it? Well, the people who voted for it were the same people again– Fine Gael, the Fianna Fáil party, Labour and the PDs. So these people set up this situation 11 years ago, they’re the ones who set this up, and they now expect me to undo all their work within a matter of six months.”

He went on to say: “Since coming to office I have tried to show that there is no need for a 600,000 tonne waste Incinerator. It’s far too big and in an inappropriate location from a traffic point of view. I’m not just looking at this from a narrow local perspective, I’m looking at this, as I have to do as Minister, from the national perspective and I have to bear that in mind at all times, I have to look at the national interest but I don’t believe that it is also in the national interest to have over -capacity in relation to Incineration.”

I asked him if the laws could be changed so that he could apply a ban under the Waste Management Act to the Poolbeg site and he replied that he had looked at every piece of legal advice preventing him but said that at the moment he is looking at a number of options that are about issuing directions as to how waste is handled in this country. He said “What I am doing will have the overall effect of ensuring that we can minimise incineration.”

We talked about reducing waste at source from packaging products and so on. It is clear John Gormley is concerned about the waste problems that he has inherited. “I’ll tell you how serious this is, people need to understand this, that we have allowed a waste crisis to develop over many years. Again, I was not in office, other parties were in power– now I have to ensure that we comply with the ‘Landfill Directive’ by 2010.
That means that we have to increase the amount of waste, particularly bio-degradable waste, being diverted from landfill, we have to actually double the amount.

Biodegradable waste is the major issue and I am putting in place a whole series of things that will make sure that that will happen. This is probably the biggest challenge that I face as Minister, where we have the roll out of the ‘brown bins’ etc. If we have an over-capacity for incineration, our plans for maximum recycling just won’t happen.”

John Gormley says he wants to see some proper planning for the greater Sandymount/ Poolbeg area as there are so many proposals going there to date. He said “People need to understand, and I’m looking at this as Minister for the Environment, that we have a confined space down there. We have a sewerage treatment plant there, which is supposed to be state-of-the-art but it is not, it needs to be expanded and not just for the load it takes but expanded for Nitrogen removal.

There is too much Nitrogen going into the Bay– they said that there would be de-nitrification at that plant but it’s not in place and the result is that we’ve seen more algae in Dublin bay than we’ve seen in years. I’m going to have some independent research done into that plant.

We have to have a new designation for the Special Protection Area, so where is that going to go? We need compensatory habitat for birds and where is that going to go? There are plans for a cycle way around the bay so where is that going to go? The whole thing needs to be thought out and it hasn’t. This hasn’t been done so I’m looking at all of this. I’ve inherited all this and have to sort it out but I have to do so within the law.”

I asked him for his views on An Bord Pleanála and he replied, somewhat in anger, that the legislation states clearly that they have to take on board the Government’s policy or the Minister’s policy. He said that his Ministerial policy was announced very clearly on a number of occasions. “I said that there was only a need in Ireland for thermal treatment of about 500,000 max– those comments were made a number of times both in Dáil Éireann and outside in public and An Bord Pleanála chose to ignore that and it should be noted that they did take account of the Minister’s policy.”

His final remarks were about going into government with Fianna Fáil. He said “If in the morning we in the Green Party left Government, I assure you Eamon Gilmore would be doing business with Brian Cowen.”