Government defends Northern Ireland recycling cuts

Northern Ireland minister Angela E Smith answered questions from MPs by insisting the Waste Management Grant Scheme was slashed by 3 million in 2006/07 because of budget pressures.

Ms Smith refused to bow to demands for flexibility for Northern Ireland's councils to spend the 7 million that is being made available to them on a range of costs, rather than new capital infrastructure.

The minister explained: “The basis of the Waste Management Grant Scheme was as a capital grant for the provision of smaller infrastructure elements. Its increased use for associated resource projects has depended upon in-year monitoring, enabling flexibility between capital and resource elements, but that flexibility cannot be provided for 2006–07.

“Hard decisions had to be made during the most recent Budget process, and this resulted in the loss of flexibility for the use of funds for resources,” Ms Smith added.

Impact
Ms Smith said the Department of the Environment had assessed the potential impact of the requirement to spend funding on capital projects. She suggested that councils that have been spending their waste management grant on revenue costs in the past would have to raise district rates by “between one and 2.5p”.

The minister was responding to a series of questions from SDLP leader Mark Durkan, the MP for Foyle. The response to MPs also came following heavy criticism from the Northern Ireland Local Government Association last month on the restrictions to local authority funding for recycling (see letsrecycle.com story).

Ms Smith said: “I fully recognize the difficulties faced by local councils in meeting their waste management requirements, particularly those contained in the EU Landfill Directive. My Department is committed to working in partnership with councils to assist them with these responsibilities and to this end, we have set up a number of important working groups comprising representatives from central and local government.”