Readers of NewsFour will remember the article by the Combined Residents Against Incineration (CRAI) in the August edition concerning a mysterious ‘survey’.
At the Dublin City Council South East Area Committee of 13 September, Councillor Dermot Lacey put down a motion as follows:

To ask the Manager if she can report on what involvement, if any, Dublin City Council had in, the recent survey entitled Ex-Ante Incinerator Community Questionnaire. For what purpose was the survey conducted, who compiled the survey, who paid for the survey, when will the results of this survey be published and on what basis were the assertions contained in question number 42 determined, by who and for what reason Dublin City Council was unaware of this survey and investigated the source. The following reply was received from the Heritage Trust Professor of Environmental Studies, University College Dublin:

This is a PhD undertaken under my supervision. Our department specialises in the economic assessment of choices in regard to environmental endowments. We have an international reputation in undertaking such research, and in particular doing studies addressed to understanding the values that individuals and communities place on options.
The core objective is to mobilise our skills and experience to gain insight into the losses perceived by members of a community when a new intervention, in this case an incinerator, is proposed.

The contingent valuation methodology applied draws on protocols developed by a Nobel Prize panel of economists who developed same. One purpose was to advance the methodology in general and specifically to assess its applicability in regard to assessing waste disposal choices.

Advancing the state of the art is a core requirement for a PhD candidate. Secondly, we hope that the findings will inform the values people in Ireland generally place on final disposal options. We are also surveying in 3 other locations and so we expect to develop generalisable results.

We in U.C.D. piloted the study, with advice from survey specialists. A professional survey company was then hired (selected via competitive bidding) to undertake the survey. The sample size, the selection of households, and the questions asked all follow best international practice.

We successfully applied to the Environmental Protection Agency (E.P.A.) for PhD Fellowship grant provided under their Environmental Research and Technological Development and Innovation (ERTDI) Scheme. Such applications are independently reviewed by peer scholars internationally to ensure that: they are independent contributions to scholarship, use state of the art methodologies and whose findings will be published in the international literature. It is a very competitive process. Some results will be available from January 2006.

Question 42. This question, which addresses willingness to accept compensation, must be asked in order to follow the best practice protocols. The PhD would be compromised if this question was not asked. U.C.D. was wholly responsible for all questions for the main reasons elaborated above.