Curragh Dump stories

Council told 'immediate action is needed' on OPW Curragh dumping

THE CURRAGH, 21 July 2000: 8.30am by Trish Whelan & Brian Byrne. Kildare County Council has been told to take immediate action over what residents and environmentalists say is ‘illegal’ dumping of clay close to Donnelly’s Hollow on The Curragh, a proposed National Heritage Area. And they expressed their anger directly yesterday to council officials for being ‘ignored’ since last month when they first tried to make contact with the local authority on the matter.

The material is from works at Magee Barracks in Kildare, where facilities for asylum seekers are being developed. KNN estimates that 30,000 cubic metres of material has already been dumped at the Donnelly’s Hollow site alone by a contractor working for the Office of Public Works. Another Curragh site at Knocknagarm is also being used.

Assistant county manager Tommy Skehan, who was invited to Donnelly’s Hollow yesterday where members of the news media were shown what is described as the ‘destruction’ of part of a national monument, declined to give any assurances that action would be taken, saying he was ‘only there to listen’. “We will go back, review what we’ve seen, and see what our position is,” he told a large group of local concerned people. That position didn’t go down very well.

He was shown copies of letters to the local authority written both by the Curragh Golf Club and local resident Tom Snell, informing them of the dumping, and to which neither had received acknowledgement or reply. Tom Snell said he had also called the emergency phone number at Kildare County Council ‘a hundred times’ without getting any response.

Kildare environmentalist Dr Ann Behan (pictured on left with Tom Snell), whose services have been retained by Mr Snell, said the dumped clay had to be removed immediately because it was rich top soil alien to the local landscape where ‘sand and gravel are natural’.

“There has been a smell from what was dumped here and there is a possibility of ground water pollution and pollution from nutrients,” she told Mr Skehan and county information officer Charlie Talbot. “There is also no possibility of monitoring what actually goes into a dump of this kind, and it poses a threat to the Curragh Aquifer underneath.”

Dr Behan said what has already been dumped should be removed very carefully down to the grass without breaking the original sod. She added that she believes it is the intention of the contractors to fill in the entire area right up to the back of Donnelly’s Hollow. Residents had observed a huge volume of clay being dumped, with three lorries continually drawing to the site for two weeks.

(At last Monday’s meeting of Kildare County Council, Cllr Fionnulla Dukes asked if council officials were aware of dumping of clay and sand at Donnelly’s Hollow. In reply, county engineer Jimmy Lynch said the dumping ‘was causing no environmental damage’ to the area, and it was authorised by emergency legislation in connection with the housing of asylum seekers.)

Dr Behan said bodies such as Duchas and the Wild Life Trust had not been given a required two months’ notice prior to dumping taking place and she wanted to know who had authorised the dumping. She said work at Magee Barracks to provide for asylum seekers was local to the barracks and should not involve the Curragh and ‘the degradation of a national monument’.

“The material should have been disposed of in a facility where it posed no environmental threat, or it could have been used for landscaping within the former barracks area,” she said.

Tom Snell said bulldozing the Curragh to make room for rubble was a ‘terrible destruction’. Dr Behan said the whole matter was contrary to the proposals for sustainable development of the Curragh as outlined in the Curragh Task Force Report. It is also against the terms of a public notice issued by the Department of Defence last year which prohibited dumping of litter or rubbish of any nature ‘in the interests of and for the protection and conservation of the Curragh lands’.

“This is an issue of national significance, because it is indicative of how we treat our national monuments,” Dr Behan said yesterday. “People are concerned that an important part of their landscape could be filled in like this. They are not happy with it and they don’t accept it.”

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