Explainer: Oral hearing is final chapter in 12-year Irish Cement Limerick saga

THIS week’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) oral hearing could be among the final rites of a saga which has dragged over 12 years.

It was back in 2008 when Irish Cement initially flagged plans to change the way it operates its factory in Mungret.

Instead of fossil fuels limited in supply and considered very environmentally unfriendly, the firm unveiled plans to instead use solid recovered waste and used tyres which were piling up in dumps across Ireland to produce the material.

Back then, the planning application to build the storage facilities associated with this passed almost unnoticed, the old Limerick County Council granting planning permission.

However, as Ireland – and the world – tumbled into recession in 2009, these plans were never progressed.

Until late 2015, when Irish Cement, by then, with a much reduced workforce, announced it would reactivate the proposals, which it said would be better for the environment as well as securing the future of the 80 remaining staff in Mungret.

Since 2008, Mungret has grown, becoming a focal point of the Limerick 2030 plan, with hundreds of new homes built there.

The new plans were bound to attract attention, and they duly did, with more than 3,000 people writing to the EPA with concerns among plans, and a coalition of concerned parties, known as Limerick Against Pollution being formed.

Chief among their concerns were the impact the burning of materials like waste and tyres would have on the environment.

Irish Cement has long maintained its reforms will in fact be better for the environment, and will have a negligible impact because of the fact the incineration will take place at a high temperature.​

In early 2017, Irish Cement again secured planning permission to build the storage facilities for its new materials on site, this time from the merged council.

This decision was appealed to An Bord Pleanala, paving the way for an oral hearing later that year.

Despite three-and-a-half days of evidence – most of it from objectors to Irish Cement’s proposals – the national appeals body approved the proposals. Then in 2019, the EPA granted the firm an operating licence, something immediately appealed. This is why this final oral hearing is taking place.