Vol. 561 No. 4
338 Mr. McCormack asked the Minister for Health and Children if he has instructed all health boards to comply with the regulations laid down regarding the disposing of waste from hospitals and other institutions under his jurisdiction; and if he will make a statement on the matter. [4269/03]
Health boards have an obligation to comply with all statutory and local authority regulations regarding the disposing of waste from hospitals and other institutions and I would expect them to meet their obligations in this regard. In 1994, my Department issued a health services waste policy to all health boards and acute voluntary hospitals. The policy advocated good environmental and health and safety practices in the management, handling and disposal of all wastes generated in hospitals. Central to this policy were the segre gation of health care waste into risk waste and non-risk waste and the initiation of a national contract to deal with the health care risk waste.
A national contract has been in operation for the past three years for the collection and treatment of health care risk waste by alternative technology. The facilities used are licensed by the Environmental Protection Agency. All acute hospitals now have their healthcare risk waste treated and disposed of in this manner. These arrangements are working satisfactorily. The non-risk hospital waste, which is largely domestic in nature, is disposed of by the municipal or commercial waste disposal route. A detailed guidance document was issued in 1999 on the segregation, packaging and storage of health care risk waste. This latter document has been up-dated and issued recently in the light of recent regulatory changes relating to the transportation and carriage of such materials.
In the wake of recent reports of alleged instances of illegal dumping of waste, some of which was stated to be hospital waste, my Department wrote to the health agencies, drawing attention to the guidelines and stressing the importance of ensuring that reputable waste contractors are employed and that proof of disposal to licensed landfill site is obtained for each load of non-risk waste. The contractors operate under permits issued by the local waste authorities.
