EPA confirm investigation into incident at Irish Cement plant in Limerick

AN INCIDENT which saw Irish Cement dust in Limerick go “beyond the boundary of the licensed site” has been confirmed by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Irish Cement notified the EPA at 2pm on Wednesday, September 4, of an “incident at their facility” in Mungret, which is reported to have “led to a release of cement dust beyond the boundary of the licensed site”. 

The incident allegedly involved the loss of final cement product, which occurred at 4:30am, during the loading of a road tanker at one of the site’s final product dispatch silos. 

It was reported that a quantity of product did not go into the tanker as normal and instead deposited on the ground below the tanker, as confirmed by the EPA.

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“The licensee reported that one of the facility’s onsite Ambient Particulate Monitors, located to the southeast of the production area, registered elevated particulate levels in air at around the time of the incident,” the EPA statement reads.

“Both Irish Cement and the EPA received a number of complaints in relation to dust on cars and property from local residents in the Slí na Manach and Ard Thomain areas, further to the southeast of the facility.”

EPA inspectors have since visited the site in Mungret and have confirmed the “immediate corrective actions taken and are tracking the implementation of longer-term preventative actions”. 

A report of the EPA Site Visit and other documents in relation to the incident will be made available on the EPA’s LEAP Online portal in due course.

The EPA have said that their priority “is to ensure that the necessary management practices are in place to eliminate the causes of this type of incident and to protect the environment”.