Despite being the first part of the UK to draw up a waste management strategy, the Northern Ireland Affairs select committee said the strategy's implementation has been “patchy”.
” If action is not taken quickly, Northern Ireland may fail to meet its first major EU target in 2010 and, as a consequence, incur substantial financial penalties“
– Northern Ireland MPs
The failure of the Strategy to deliver lies less with the Strategy document itself, than its implementation the committee said in a report published yesterday.
MPs warned: “If action is not taken quickly, Northern Ireland may fail to meet its first major EU target in 2010 and, as a consequence, incur substantial financial penalties.”
Leadership
The major factor in the waste management difficulties has been an “absence of strong leadership by Northern Ireland departments”.
Waste cannot be left to one Department, the committee said, but Departments other than the DoE have not been pulling their weight. “The failure of government departments to provide strong overall leadership is disappointing, and has put in jeopardy the likelihood of meeting the EU targets, and realising the strategy's vision,” the committee said.
Infrastructure
The committee said it was “deeply concerned” with the “continuing substantial delays” in the planning process. It also highlighted the lack of infrastructure to provide alternatives to landfill as a point of concern.
The committee noted that Northern Ireland's “Wake up to Waste” media advertising campaign, launched in February 2002, had been “effective in raising the profile of waste issues”. But, the campaign had raised householders' expectations of recycling to an unachievable level, MPs said, because the infrastructure for recycling was “frequently not present”.
Commenting further on the lack of infrastructure, the committee said: “We also have concerns that the Department appears to be limiting landfill applications at a time when disillusionment with the planning process is deterring applications for alternatives to landfill.”
Funding
The difficulties in Northern Ireland's waste infrastructure are being compounded by the absence of a clear funding strategy, MPs said.
The overall estimate for new infrastructure investment alone is of the order of 400 million, according to the DoE, but funding is only going to waste in the order of 42m each year from the 26 district councils, including the annual 10m fund from the Department of Environment. An urgent injection of PFI money is needed, the committee suggested, and a clear announcement for how much funding will be provided for local authorities in years to come.
Other points highlighted by yesterday's committee report included the suggestion that rather than three local authority partnerships with three separate plans, a single waste management plan should be drawn up for Northern Ireland.
WRAP
More work needs to be carried out to develop local reprocessing capacity for recycled materials – the report recommended the full WRAP programmes need to be rolled out in Northern Ireland “as there is a severe lack of reprocessing capacity and need for targeted markets development”.
| Related links: |
And, the Northern Ireland Affairs committee said the problem of illegal dumping of waste both within Northern Ireland and from the Republic of Ireland needs to be tackled with new legislation. A new environmental protection agency for Northern Ireland could be important in reducing the cross-border fly-tipping and waste dumping, MPs said.
Register for free to comment