Dublin City Council should appear at Oireachtas Committee to explain contract revelations - Andrews

Dublin South East Fianna Fáil T.D. Chris Andrews has today (3rd September) said in light of revelations surrounding the contract between Dublin City Council and Covanta for the building of a 600,000 tonne incinerator, DCC should immediately appear before the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Environment to explain why details of an apparent break clause in the contract were not made known to elected representatives and the general public.

Speaking today Deputy Andrews said: “Dublin City Council has used the excuse of commercial sensitivity as the reason for not making details of the contract known, however serious questions have now arisen as to whether or not DCC was purposely withholding details of the contract to ensure that the fact that there was a means by which to break the contract included in the detail.”

“Dublin City Council has repeatedly claimed that the State would be faced with multi-million euro compensation bills if the project were to be halted.  We now know that this is not the case.”

“The fact is this proposed incinerator is simply too large for the amount of waster being produced. Covanta has confirmed that the company is prepared to go outside the Dublin region to seek waste to meet its targets, which proves that Dublin will not have the waste to fuel this enormous incinerator.”

“Dublin City Council is in effect pushing though a national incinerator which waste will be transported to. Given the location of the site, this is nothing short of lunacy. We now know that this contract can be broken or renegotiated and why Dublin City Council are not willing to do this must be questioned.”

“I have written to the Chairman of the Environment Committee to request the appearance of Dublin City Council management and Covanta before the Committee to explain the discrepancies which now appear, and I expect this to happen as a matter of urgency. The people of Dublin South East and the taxpayer deserve the truth on this matter.”