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TIPT is a free weekly environmental news service published by Friends of the Irish Environment. More than 12,500 stories from the last four years are searchable on our website, where comments can be posted on individual stories.
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| Gormley unable to say what will happen to Haulbowline site |
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 ENVIRONMENT Minister John Gormley will be unable to say how the former Irish Steel plant will be dealt with until a Government decision is made on the issue. A spokesman for Mr Gormley reiterated last night that the minister would be bringing an "options paper" to cabinet "early in the new year".
But the spokesman said the minister could not indicate in advance what actions the Government might take, as a formal cabinet decision would have to be made on the matter. Read more.
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| Plan being drafted to cull 100,000 pigs |
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 A PLAN to slaughter 100,000 pigs and destroy the carcasses from the 10 restricted farms where contaminated feed was used is being drafted by the Department of Agriculture. The department's chief veterinary officer, Paddy Rogan, said the animals on these sites would have to be removed from the system.
He said the intention was to have the pigs slaughtered and their carcases destroyed in grade one rendering plants. These plants are used to dispose of so-called specified risk material from animals. He said a plan was being devised to address the situation and to establish how this could be achieved as quickly as possible because a possibility existed of a welfare problem on the farms involved. Read more.
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| Council calls on Roche to resign over LAP letter |
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 MEATH County Council and a Government minister arc this week embroiled in a major row over plans to develop a controversial tract of land in east Meath. Members of Meath County Council on Monday called on Minister for European Affairs Dick Roche to resign as a fierce row erupted over the controversial local area plan (LAP) relating to a piece of land south of Drogheda.
The call for the resignation of the minister followed a meeting of the council on Monday after further discussion of the controversial South Drogheda Environs draft LAP and remarks made by the minister in a letter which sharply criticised the county council over its handling of the plan. Read more. |
| Gormley in bid to stymie Poolbeg incinerator plan |
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 PLANS to build one of Europe's largest incinerators descended into farce after a state agency granted it a licence to operate while the Environment Minister threatened regulations to make sure it could not. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday granted an operating licence to the planned Poolbeg incinerator in Dublin Bay, which will burn 600,000 tonnes of domestic and commercial waste each year in a plant three times larger than the next biggest facility licensed in the country. Read more. |
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Drogheda cement kiln described as 'fuel swap' |
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SOME two and a half million tyres could be burned in the new kiln at Irish Cement's Platin plant - so when is an incinerator not an incinerator? That was the question Drogheda Borough Councillors wanted answered at Monday night's council meeting. The answer, according to the Irish Cement representatives, who were briefing councillors on the company's plans to burn alternative fuels, is when it is a cement kiln. Read more. |
| Meath incinerator files go missing |
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 MEATH COUNTY council says it cannot rule out a "sinister explanation" as to why seven boxes of planning files on an incinerator being built in the county are now missing from the council offices.
The files were last seen in August when they were viewed by a member of the public at the planning offices in Navan. A spokesman yesterday said it had written to the Garda to alert them of its concerns. He said the council has reviewed CCTV footage from the office. An historic planning file from 2001 cannot be located.
The council holds electronic copies of the file and a full copy is held by An Bord Pleanála. Read more. |
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Chaotic start for Corrib gas talks forum |
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 THE Government's promise of a talks forum to resolve bitter disputes over the controversial Corrib gas project descended into chaos yesterday. As the first hearing began behind closed doors, opponents of the north Mayo Shell development boycotted the meeting and instead organised their own get-together next door.
Shell to Sea accused Energy Minister Eamon Ryan of refusing to tackle mistakes made in the eight-year battle to open the off-shore gas field and coastal refinery. Spokeswoman Maura Harrington claimed the forum would not address the real concerns. Read more. Read more. |
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Eco worrier: Walls open doors |
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 There's a striking pair of aerial photographs on pages 252 and 253 of the Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape (Allen, Whelan, Stout, Cork University Press, 1997). They show the townland of Glanfahan near Slea Head on the Dingle peninsula in Kerry. Glanfahan bestrides one of those sloping, rocky promontories that characterise coastal Kerry. A road runs above ragged, wave-washed cliffs; I've driven it myself, admiring the area's otherworldly beauty.
Between the road and the heathery slopes of Mount Eagle, an intricate network of 40 stone-walled fields testifies to millennia of human occupation, a unique record of how successive generations wrested a living from the harsh landscape, sheltering their small fields with abundant boulders and building forts and beehive huts. At least, that's what the photo on page 252, taken in 1964, shows. Read more. |
Hard times in the commuter belt |
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 Empty homes, broken promises
A three part series in the Irish Times by Carl O'Brien.
Longford is just one of the many towns that rushed to develop during the boom. Now it is left with a legacy of vacant homes, an empty shopping centre and ghostly quiet housing estates.
YOU MAKE your way along the deserted laneway as the early morning mist still hovers above the hedgerows. After a couple of miles, the first houses come into view, just beyond the ditch. It is eerily quiet, almost like a post-apocalyptic scene from a science-fiction movie. Read more. |
| Owners threaten to close Lissadell |
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 THE OWNERS of Lissadell House, the ancestral home of Countess Markievicz, have warned they will not keep it open as a tourist facility if Sligo County Council asserts public rights of way through the estate.
Councillors voted unanimously on Monday to amend the current county development plan to include a provision for "the preservation of public rights of way" along a number of routes at Lissadell.
The motion was proposed by Cllr Joe Leonard (FG) who said yesterday that local people were anxious that an amicable resolution be found, although the issue had been "a festering sore" for some time. Read more. |
| Last call for Irish corncrakes |
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 THE corncrake is expected to vanish from the Shannon Callows, one of the most important habitats for the bird in western Europe, despite a €500,000 government-funded project to save the threatened species and protect its habitat. Ornithologists fear the birds' failure to raise chicks for the sixth consecutive year means the species will soon die out.
Only four males were heard making their rasping "crex crex" mating call this summer in the grassy flood plains that run along the Shannon between the towns of Athlone in Co Westmeath and Portumna in Co Galway. This year's census of corncrakes, which migrate to the Irish countryside each summer to raise their young, was the worst on record for the callows' population. Read more. |
| Plan to bring salmon to Upper River Lee |
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 LEE Valley residents may be interested in an ambitious plan to bring back salmon to the upper part of the river.
The South Western Regional Fisheries Board (SWRFB) is embarking on a 50-year project that aims to redress the depletion of salmon stock in the upper River Lee. This was caused by the erection of dams at Inniscarra and Carrigadrohid as part of the ESB's 1956 hydroelectric scheme. Read more. |
| Digging deep - archaeological from roads |
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The road-building programme has been accused of destroying archaeological sites, but digs have revealed fascinating material, writes Claire O'Connell.
THE ECONOMIC BOOM may be over, but its flurry of road building has uncovered a wealth of archaeological finds with lasting value.
In particular, digs along proposed routes have shed light on "unknown" archaeology that may not have otherwise been examined, according to Rónán Swan, acting head of archaeology at the National Roads Authority. Read more. |
| Hopefully, we'll be able to see the forest for the trees |
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RAKING UP LEAVES for the compost heap (not, these days, for a whiff of spicy blue bonfire smoke) ought to induce some satisfaction with the world. A little melancholy is allowed, perhaps, but of the sweeter sort; nothing to mar a leisurely musing on nature's continuity, renewal, all that, writes Michael Viney.
But even as I heaped the wheelbarrow, a new forestry missive was spiralling into my inbox. Waiting there already were 155 pages of the new Review of Forest Policy for the Heritage Council and an acerbic 10-page position-paper from Friends of the Irish Environment. Read more. |
| God save the Dail |
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ALTHOUGH Garech Browne managed to raise €3m from the sale of his surplus bits and pieces at Lugalla last year, Lot 344 did not find a buyer. This is described as the Speaker's clock and was said to have come from the old Irish House of Parliament on College Green. No price was put on it in the catalogue but the "estimate on request" was a cool €500,000.
Later, Garech managed to unload the historical chronometer, which also contained a later musical box, to a patriotic gent for €400,000, who kindly presented it to Dáil Eireann. Read more. |
| Airport consultation 'a sham' |
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Opponents of a controversial plan to extend the runway at Belfast City airport today branded the public consultation on the proposal as a sham. Angry residents living under the flight paths claim the Planning Service's four week window for objections to be lodged is too short and say holding it over the festive period, with a Boxing Day deadline, will further limit people's opportunities to contribute to the exercise. The airport has lodged an application with planners to extend the main runway by almost 600 metres to allow planes with heavier loads to land. Read more. |
| Spring aim for planning speed-up |
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 Environment Minister Sammy Wilson has said a scheme aimed at speeding up the planning process could be in all council areas by next spring. The streamlined consultation scheme was introduced as a six month pilot project in partnership with Derry City Council last December. This week, Armagh became the fifth council to join up. Read more. |
| Supermarket waste to be turned into pet food |
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Waste food from a supermarket giant is to be turned into pet food in a unique environment move. Sainsbury's stores in Northern Ireland are the first in the UK to stop food waste going to landfill. From this week waste, amounting to more than 1,200 tonnes a year, will be diverted from landfill and shipped across the border to the Irish Republic where it will be turned into pet food, animal feed and other materials. It is the first step in a commitment made by the 800-strong supermarket chain last month to end the use of landfill sites. The company aims to have no food waste going to landfill by next spring, and no waste of any kind ending up in landfill by the end of 2009. Read more. |
| Call to widen curbs on UK fishing |
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 Fishing should be banned in almost a third of UK seas to help stocks recover from decades of harm, campaigners say. The Co-operative Group wants 30% of UK waters to become "no-take" reserves by 2020 to reverse decades of overfishing. It says just eight out of 47 fishing stocks are healthy and warns once-common species now face extinction. The campaign, backed by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), calls for the measures to be included in the government's Marine Bill. Read more. |
| Harbour seals' decline 'alarming' |
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 Harbour seals, or common seals, are familiar faces along coastlines across the northern hemisphere. But they are now vanishing in the UK at an alarming rate, warn scientists from St Andrews University. Numbers have halved in the hardest hit area, the Orkney Islands, since 2001 - falling almost 10% each year. There will soon be "no harbour seals left" in some areas if the mysterious decline continues, said Professor Ian Boyd, of the Sea Mammal Research Unit. Marine biologists are baffled by the disappearances and have begun investigating possible causes, which include illegal hunting and disease. Read more. |
| Industry "leaving EU regardless of carbon cost" |
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 Two-thirds of EU manufacturing firms want to move at least some of their production out of the bloc in the next few years, a new survey of senior executives by the Economist intelligence unit has revealed.
But the reason is not primarily the extra carbon costs expected from a revised EU emission trading scheme (ETS), according to the survey, which was presented at a conference in Brussels on Wednesday. Increased proximity to markets, better access to labour and tax advantages are driving re-locations. Read more. |
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Fine threat over breaches of EU environmental law |
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Greece and Portugal could be handed EU fines if they continue to breach EU environmental law despite European court orders to comply with it, the European commission has warned. The warning was made on Thursday as the commission issued its latest round of infringement proceedings against member states.
GREECE is under increased pressure to comply with standards set in the 1991 directive on URBAN WASTEWATER. Last year Athens was condemned for failing to meet the standards in 23 "agglomerations". Twelve of them are still not in compliance, the commission says. Greece is also facing a trip to the EU court over an ILLEGAL LANDFILL site in western Attica. Read more. |
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A gamble that may yet cost us the Earth |
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 THE middle of this economic whirlwind people are reaching out for ways to explain the events and put them in historical perspective. It is widely regarded as the deepest crisis capitalism has faced since the Great Depression of the 1930s; but if that is so we are only in 1930, not yet in 1933. Much worse may yet be to come.
In that case we need to consider how realistic is a return to the previous model of consumption-led and debt-fuelled growth which produced this convulsion. Can its waste of natural and human resources be afforded any longer? Have the limits of that system been reached? What alternatives are available? Read more. | |
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