Dáil Éireann debate -
Wednesday, 20 Jul 2011

Vol. 739 No. 3

Adjournment Debate

Waste Disposal

Deputy Anthony Lawlor

I thank the Ceann Comhairle for allowing me to raise this issue on the Adjournment. I will give a brief history on the landfill site at Kerdiffstown, County Kildare, close to which I live. In January a large-scale fire on the site made national headlines. The fire was associated with material that had been left lying to one side of the main landfill site. There was also the potential for contamination from leachate from the site. I looked at some of the analysis of the leachate and there was potential for it moving towards a tributary of the Liffey, which is upstream of the Leixlip treatment plant which supplies water to much of north Kildare and west Dublin.

When the EPA eventually got control, it had to deal with a number of issues. First was a serious issue in the locality with regard to the odours being emitted from the site. The EPA has installed some gas extraction facilities and the gas is being flared off. It is also monitoring water in the locality constantly to ensure the leachate is not spreading towards the tributary. To date, the EPA has spent €2.9 million on this phase of the landfill's remediation.

Phase two of the process is the planning and design of the remediation and may involve requests for planning permission to develop cells to which material may be safely moved. The third phase is the actual remediation, which may take up to five years and cost approximately €30 million. From where will this money come? The EPA is pursuing the companies that operated the landfill site. As most of them are in liquidation or receivership, it is doubtful that the EPA will be successful in garnering money from them through the courts. The EPA is also pursuing their directors as individuals, but one would not be too optimistic about securing funding in this way either.

I am delighted the Minister is present, as I wish to ask him about another source of funding, namely, the Environment Fund, which was set up under the Waste Management (Amendment) Act 2001 and was to be used for activities that were of benefit to the environment. The use of this fund for the site's remediation would be of benefit to the environment, given the constant odour problem and the potential of leachate entering a tributary of the Liffey.

Since the remediation's approximate cost will be €30 million, one may well ask whether there would be sufficient money in the Environment Fund. As of 2010, the fund generated €60 million. By 30 June this year, it had generated €30 million, a level consistent with its returns during the past three years. Based on the 2009 figures, it has a surplus of approximately €40 million. I presume the Comptroller and Auditor General's figures, when published, will also show a surplus for 2010.

While I understand the works could last for up to five years, will the Minister set aside money from the Environment Fund to remediate this landfill? If we do not remediate now, it could become problem. Remediating it over five years would be cheaper than sitting by in the belief that we had done a good job for the time being and waiting eight to ten years for the economy to pick up and for us to have money, since by that time we could have a more expensive environmental disaster to remediate.

Will the Minister ring-fence some of the Environment Fund's surplus to secure and remediate this site so that it can either be brought into public ownership or a charge can be put on the land, through which its owners would be required to pay something towards the site's remediation? If he does, we will have cleaned up an environmental hazard in the locality of Naas.

Minister for the Environment, Community and Local Government (Deputy Phil Hogan)

I thank Deputy Lawlor for raising what is an important matter for his community and for providing me with an opportunity to update the House on the substantial effort being made by the relevant agencies, with financial support from my Department, to address the issues involved.

As the Deputy indicated, substantial funding has already been provided from the Environment Fund to deal with the situation at the landfill at Kerdiffstown, County Kildare. Some €2.26 million has been made available to support the work of Kildare County Council and the EPA in dealing with the fire that arose at the facility and in the follow-up work to address the longer-term issues arising. I am committed to providing funding for additional expenditure to be incurred by the EPA in the period to the end of 2011 in respect of the agency's ongoing work at Kerdiffstown.

While further significant expenditure will arise beyond that, it is not possible to quantify precisely at this time, as the costs involved will depend on a range of factors, including the quantities of waste, the approach to remediation required and the results of tendering processes. The levels of future funding available through the Environment Fund to fund specific projects and programmes will depend on the revenues accruing to the fund from the landfill and plastic bag levies and the range of competing demands seeking to draw from it. Against this uncertain background, the Deputy will appreciate that I cannot give an absolute guarantee on ring-fencing further funding for works at Kerdiffstown in the years ahead, but I assure him that dealing with legacy issues at Kerdiffstown is a priority for me and will remain so when it comes to making future decisions on activities to be funded from the Environment Fund.

The current situation at Kerdiffstown is that, following the completion of the fire-fighting activity on 25 February 2011, the day the Deputy was elected, the fire services passed control of the site to the EPA. The agency is using powers under the Waste Management Acts to remediate the site and to put in place appropriate after care measures. I understand that the next major remedial works to occur on site will be the demolition of a number of unsafe buildings. These are scheduled to be demolished in August and I understand that the EPA, as part of its communications programme regarding the site, will be outlining the specific dates before the works commence.

In general, remedial works are continuing at the site as part of a process that will take a few years. Apart from the demolition works to which I have just referred, the next phase of activity involves a detailed site investigation, which is being advanced and prioritised to end of this year, followed by detailed design of the full remediation works programme.

The EPA has also established a community liaison group comprising the agency, local residents, including members of the Clean Air for Naas group, business representatives and Kildare County Council. The first meeting of the group was held earlier this month and included a site visit for group members and elected representatives from the area. A range of relevant information is available on the dedicated project website established by the EPA.

I am conscious of the significant environmental damage caused by the reckless and irresponsible management of the Kerdiffstown site by the company. Deputy Lawlor can be assured that the site remediation will proceed as quickly as possible, but I cannot give the undertakings he has requested, as 200 legacy landfill sites in conditions that are almost identical to those at Kerdiffstown are also in need of remediation. I am sorry that I have inherited so many sites that require this level of remediation and improvement in the interests of their communities and the environment, but I will do everything I can to assist the Deputy and the Kerdiffstown community as soon as possible.

Litter Pollution

Deputy Ciarán Lynch

I thank the Ceann Comhairle's office for granting me leave to raise this Adjournment matter. In particular, I thank the Minister for taking this debate, which I have raised so that I might ask him to amend the Litter Pollution Act 1997 to ensure that local authorities are better equipped to combat the growing problem of illegal dumping. Local authorities can only take action if the illegal dumping is somewhere it can be viewed by the public. The specific language of the Act states that it is illegal for a person to create litter in a public place or in any place that is visible to any extent from a public place. This means that, if people are gathering rubbish in their back garden and it cannot be seen from the road outside their house, the local authority is prohibited from taking an action against that household.

While the phrase's original intention was to empower local authorities to enforce litter pollution laws on private lands that are visible from public places, it has had the unintended effect of facilitating illegal dumping that remains hidden from the public eye. Furthermore, the legislation's wording ignores the fact that a number of other senses are offended by the blight, for example, smells, the sounds of rodents and other nuisances associated with the accumulation of rubbish. This is a serious problem, particularly in areas in which vacant properties have been allowed to fall into a state of disrepair and have become magnets for dumping. Litter wardens should not be prevented from taking action in such cases simply because the waste cannot be seen from a public place.

Where student accommodation is concerned, a landlord is not required to have a waste collection agreement in place. If students move in and do not put a waste collection system in place, their rubbish accumulates in the back garden or to the side of the house. Since it is not visible from the public road, the area's residents must live with it.

I urge the Minister to make the necessary legislative changes so that local authorities are in a stronger position to combat illegal dumping on private property regardless of whether the rubbish can be seen from public places. This is a serious, yet resolvable problem and I look forward to the Minister's response on how he will address it.

Deputy Phil Hogan

I thank Deputy Lynch for raising the issue of litter pollution, a matter in which I also have a very keen interest. The Litter Pollution Acts 1997 to 2009 provide the statutory framework to combat litter effectively. Under the Acts, the primary management and enforcement response to littering must come from the local authorities. The role of my Department is to provide the legislative framework and, within the prevailing funding constraints, to provide some limited financial support to local authorities for their enforcement efforts. As independent statutory bodies with democratically elected councils and their own management system, it is a matter for each local authority to determine the most appropriate course of action, within the legislation provided, to tackle issues of this nature in their own local areas.

Regarding litter on private property, under section 6 of the Litter Pollution Act 1997, it is an offence to allow the build-up of litter on a property that is visible from a public place. Furthermore, if it considers that precautionary measures are required to prevent the creation of litter in its functional area, a local authority may, under section 9 of the Litter Pollution Act, serve a notice on the person concerned requiring the removal of the litter to which the contravention relates or take such other precautionary measures specified in the notice as the local authority considers necessary.

While I am aware of the difficulties that can be caused by the accumulation out of sight of the public of large quantities of litter, an amendment such as that suggested may be deemed unconstitutional as, in the absence of a visible litter problem justifying an intervention, it may be viewed as infringing on a citizen's right to privacy. There are, however, other means to address the issue where it manifests itself in problems other than visible litter. The build-up of significant levels of refuse in the manner outlined by the Deputy would most likely lead to vermin problems. Under the Rats and Mice Destruction Act 1919 — and this is a new one for me — rodent control is the responsibility of the occupier of a premises.

Deputy Ciarán Lynch

The HSE.

Deputy Phil Hogan

Given the public health issues involved, enforcement of the legislation falls to the Health Service Executive. Furthermore, where problems of this nature occur in local authority accommodation, the local authority, in its capacity as landlord, has a responsibility to ensure the property is being maintained in a reasonable condition and does not constitute a health risk. The landlord may in this case insist on making an inspection of the property and ensuring that whatever remedial action is required to deal with the issue is taken.

I am carrying out a review of waste and litter policy and one of the aspects I will be considering is the adequacy of litter fines and litter legislation generally. While it is unlikely that, for the privacy related issues I have indicated, I will be able to amend the Litter Pollution Act to encompass areas that are not in public view, I will certainly consider the matter raised by the Deputy in the context of that review.

Mental Health Services

Deputy Thomas P. Broughan

Let me first commend Deputy Kathleen Lynch on her new role as Minister of State with responsibility for mental health and on her efforts to progress services and facilities for citizens with mental health needs. I am glad to have the opportunity to bring the critical issue of mental health services in the north Dublin area to the Minister's attention. Under the direction of the Mental Health Commission, the male and female acute units in St. Ita's Hospital, Portrane, are set to close on 31 August when the hospital's licence is withdrawn. These critical services are supposed to be replaced by a new acute unit at Beaumont Hospital. Of course, I accept the bona fides of the Mental Health Commission's decision that the acute facilities at St. Ita's are massively sub-standard and hugely outdated. There has been a long campaign to phase out the hospital. There are, however, profound concerns about what will happen to citizens with acute psychiatric hospital needs when the St. Ita's acute units close at the end of August.

While generally aware of the closure, I was shocked to see a couple of weeks ago in Dublin City Council's planning list for week 25 the planning application for the Beaumont unit only being granted now. Many people thought that this unit was close to completion or had been already built. Development is proposed for two sites on the Beaumont grounds, immediately to the east of the existing multi-storey car park and to the north of the Irish Kidney Association building. The site near the multi-storey car park is to consist of a new two-storey structure with a number of internal courtyards housing an acute psychiatric residential facility and old age psychiatric residential facility. According to the Minister for Health, the contract has been awarded for the new acute admissions unit at Beaumont and construction on the unit will not start at the end of 2011.

In a reply to a question submitted by Deputy Ó Caoláin on 14 July, the Minister for Health reported that there was an interim plan to refurbish part of the existing buildings at St. Ita's until the new Beaumont unit was ready. Incredibly, however, the Minister also reported on the same date just last week that: "Refurbishment work has not yet been undertaken and I understand that the HSE is in discussions with the Commission with a view to agreeing alternative arrangements for patients."

I hope the Minister present will be able to comprehensively report on the outcome of those discussions. It is shockingly close to the closure deadline and many patients and their families are very worried because they are completely in the dark about what will happen after 31 August. For example, it is rumoured in Fingal that Fingal patients will have to be accommodated at locations like Ardee, County Louth.

There is also a serious crisis in the provision of mental health services for adolescents in the north Dublin region, and a number of staff working in the area are regularly in touch with me on this matter. Since the recommendation by the Mental Health Commission of a ban on the admission of adolescents into adult wards, there has been an ongoing crisis in the provision of appropriate assessments or inpatient admissions when necessary for 16 and 17 year olds. There are just six beds in the adolescent unit in St. Vincent's Hospital, Fairview for the huge catchment area of the northside of Dublin and they are always full. Local clinicians report that this is an excellent unit that tries to free up beds as quickly as possible. But with only six beds available it is very difficult to find a bed if a young person is in extreme crisis in an accident and emergency room or a GP's surgery. Private hospitals such as St. John of God's or St. Patrick's do not accept emergency admissions over the weekend so an adolescent must spend the whole weekend in an accident and emergency department waiting for admission if a crisis occurs at the weekend.

Incredibly, staff have reported that they have been directed to seek adolescent beds in Cork or Galway if the Fairview unit is full. Understandably, local clinicians believe the proposed transfer of an adolescent in a crisis or suicidal situation to a bed hundreds of miles across the country in Cork or Galway is not an appropriate or practical response. I understand that staff also believe that HSE management have not been properly engaged on this matter and there have been ongoing issues about getting senior HSE managers to attend critical meetings with local clinicians and mental health service providers.

Why can 16 and 17 year olds who need access to mental health services not be seen by child and young adolescent services rather than adult psychiatry services? In the Mater Hospital and Temple Street hospital there are 24-hour on-call services for children and adolescents up to the age of 15 for emergency assessments which 16 and 17 year olds cannot access. Incidentally, why is there not a similar 24-hour service available at Beaumont? In the longer term, local clinicians have suggested the creation of youth mental health teams which could be manned by both child and adult psychiatrists and psychologists and nurses. These teams could deal with young people between 15 and 25.

On St. Ita's and youth mental health service provision, the key problem is that the Mental Health Commission has rightly made decisions on the unsuitability of current mental health facilities or practices. Adequate interim measures and resources have simply not been put in place and are causing extreme distress for citizens who need to access mental health services. What reassurances can the Minister now provide to patients and staff across the north Dublin region that the profound deficit in mental health services in our region will be urgently addressed?

Deputy Phil Hogan

I will be taking this matter on behalf of my colleague the Minister for Health and I thank Deputy Broughan for raising it as it provides me with an opportunity to update the House on the current position in the development of mental health services in north Dublin.

The Mental Health Commission has attached a condition to the registration of St. Ita's Hospital which requires the closure of the existing male and female acute units by 31 August. Officials and clinicians from north Dublin mental health services had meetings with the commission regarding requirements to address this condition, and a plan involving the refurbishment of part of an existing building at the hospital was developed as an interim solution pending the completion of the proposed new acute psychiatric unit at Beaumont Hospital. The refurbishment work has not yet been undertaken and I understand the HSE is in discussions with the commission with a view to agreeing alternative arrangements for patients. The HSE has, however, assured the Minister that access to appropriate acute mental health services will continue to be provided for the people of north Dublin beyond 31 August 2011.

With regard to the new acute psychiatric unit at Beaumont Hospital, the position is that the contract has been awarded and an application for planning permission has been submitted. The Minister is hopeful that construction will commence in the last quarter of 2011.

Traditionally adult mental health services were responsible for the 16 to 17 year old age group and admissions to approved centres in that age group were to adult facilities. However, the Mental Health Act 2001 amended the definition of a child to include 16 and 17 year olds, and A Vision for Change subsequently recommended that the child and adolescent mental health service should provide services to all children up to the age of 18 years. Thus, in the context of the implementation of A Vision for Change, the HSE is required to reconfigure resources and to remodel psychiatric services to ensure 16 and 17 year olds are treated by the child and adolescent service. Currently, transitional arrangements apply for services for children in this age group, as resources are redirected from the adult service to the child and adolescent service.

At present, the community adult mental health services in HSE North Dublin provide out-patient services to 16 and 17 year olds, while the Mater child and adolescent mental health services provide the service for young persons up to 16. This arrangement will continue until the services provided by the Mater are developed in line with A Vision for Change.

There are currently 61 child and adolescent mental health teams nationally, of which 56 are community based. Further teams will be developed in line with the recommendations of A Vision for Change and in this regard I would like to draw the attention of the House to the commitment in the programme for Government to ringfence €35 million annually from within the health budget to develop community mental health teams and services to ensure early access to more appropriate services both for adults and children.

Inpatient psychiatric services for adolescents in north Dublin are provided at St. Vincent's Hospital, Fairview and at Warrenstown for children up to 16 years. I am pleased to say that work is due to commence later this year on the second phase of the child and adolescent unit at Fairview, which will increase capacity from six to 12 beds. It is also proposed to provide an eight-bed interim facility in St. Loman's, Palmerstown, pending the proposed development of a purpose built 22-bed child and adolescent unit in Cherry Orchard.

I again thank Deputy Broughan for raising this matter and giving me the opportunity to allay any concerns regarding the provision of mental health services in north Dublin. The House can be assured of the ongoing commitment of this Government to the development of mental health services in line with A Vision for Change.

Medical Cards

Deputy Joe Costello

I thank the Ceann Comhairle's office for allowing this matter to be debated on the Adjournment. I also thank the Minister for being present. It is good to see a Minister here at this hour of the night. He is very welcome.

I have tabled this matter to request the Minister to deal urgently with a situation that has been brought to my attention recently by a number of constituents. They have been refused medical cards for the bizarre reason that they earn too little and fall below a minimum income limit, rather than exceeding it. Not many people would believe that such an irrational situation applies.

This ruling is being applied to self-employed people, mature students on grants and people who have found for various reasons that they are not entitled to social welfare payments. To illustrate the case, I would draw the Minister's attention to two cases. First, a mature student who is a constituent of mine graduated recently from college with a first class degree. She was encouraged by the college to continue by doing a Masters degree and then a PhD programme, due to her brilliance. She was hopeful of starting the Masters programme but was informed that the mature student's grant has been cut from over €6,100 to just €2,300 because from this year mature students do not have automatic entitlement to what is called the "non-adjacent rate". That excludes people living in Dublin and surrounding areas, including university towns and campuses. Of course, as mature students are not living with their parents they are not dependants either.

The mature student grant was equivalent to the supplementary welfare rate and so she had retained her entitlement to a medical card during her three undergraduate years. Now that the maintenance grant has fallen below the supplementary welfare rate, she has been informed that if she accepts the place in college on the reduced maintenance grant, she will lose her medical card. This is bureaucracy gone mad. If she refuses the college place and turns her back on the postgraduate studies, she will most likely be unemployed and will be in receipt of the jobseeker's allowance. However, and this is the catch — or the benefit — she will then be entitled to a medical card. After being six months unemployed on the jobseeker's allowance, she will be able to avail of the back to education allowance. When she is on the latter allowance, she will have full social welfare, the maintenance grant — albeit the non-adjacent one, which is lower — and the medical card. Of course, it will be far more expensive on the State but it will occur six months later, the course will not start for 12 months, so she will have lost a year's studies. The situation is disadvantageous for everybody in those circumstances.

This first-class honours graduate has an opportunity to progress through education and greatly enhance her employment prospects and her contribution to the State, but is now effectively being excluded from the education system. The cut in her grant means that she is being discriminated against because she is already living in Dublin. A mature student from the country could move to Dublin to study and be entitled to the full grant. That is how anomalous the situation is.

The second case is of another constituent who is earning just €72 per week. He has worked since he was 15 years of age and claimed unemployment assistance for just three weeks in his entire life. He is now being told that he earns too little to be considered for a medical card as he is not, and I quote, "financially independent, with means that are within the medical card-GP-visit card guidelines. For a person to be considered financially independent, s-he must be in receipt of income equivalent to, or greater than, the current standard rate of supplementary welfare allowance". So it must be at least at the supplementary welfare allowance rate of €186, or greater. Unfortunately, the poor man is below, not above, the threshold so he does not qualify. It is ludicrous.

Apparently, the presumption is — I do not know whether there is any truth in this, but I have heard it — that anybody earning less than the social welfare allowance of €186 could not possibly survive on that and must be abusing the system. The system will therefore not accept their application on those grounds.

The preservation of our citizens' health and wellbeing must be a priority for the State. It is imperative that the operation of the medical card scheme is carried out fairly and that those most in need of health care have recourse to seeking proper medical care. The Minister should review the scheme to ensure that bureaucratic guidelines do not prevent people who are most in need of medical cards from receiving them. I call on the Minister to reverse this anomaly.

Deputy Phil Hogan

I am taking this Adjournment mater on behalf of the Minister for Health who apologise for his inability to take this matter personally. I am happy to have an opportunity to explain, as the Deputy probably already knows, how the person's eligibility for a medical card is assessed.

Deputy Joe Costello

I do indeed, Minister. I am looking for a solution.

Deputy Phil Hogan

I am interested in the examples cited by the Deputy, but I cannot give him a solution because I am not the appropriate Minister to give the discretionary information he requires. Deputy Costello has put forward an interesting number of examples which give rise to concern about the manner in which these matters are being investigated and assessed by the HSE. Applicants whose weekly incomes are solely derived from social welfare or HSE payments, even where the amounts are in excess of the HSE income guidelines, are granted a medical card, either a first application or a renewal. While income guidelines are the principal benchmark used for deciding medical card eligibility, the HSE does look beyond the applicant's financial situation and has regard to other matters that it considers appropriate in assessing a person for a medical card.

Rather than giving the Deputy the standard reply I have before me, I will ask the Deputy to furnish me with the examples he has cited this evening, including correspondence. I will then bring them to the attention of the Minister for Health. I will ask him to have them fully investigated.

Deputy Joe Costello

I thank the Minister.

The Dáil adjourned at 10.40 p.m. until 10.30 a.m. on Thursday, 21 July 2011.