Waste Management Dail Éireann — 2021-09-16 ============================================================ Jennifer Whitmore (SD), Wicklow This is an important initiative and it is where we need to be going with a lot of our products. I am pleased that the Minister of State met the company and contacted the EPA in this regard. My understanding is there are currently 34 applications on its desk. The time taken to assess these applications varies from five months to more than two years, and in some instances the timeframe has exceeded four years. These are companies that are required to get these determinations so they need clarity and certainty as they are operating businesses. For them to have to wait that length of time in order to get the approvals they require is not acceptable, when we compare that with Northern Ireland, where the exact same application would take three to four weeks. My understanding is that some companies are considering moving their operations to Northern Ireland, which would be very unfortunate, because our systems are not being sufficiently resourced or moving fast enough for them. --- Source: Houses of the Oireachtas. Licensed under CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). The Official Report is revised after first publication; the fetch timestamp below identifies the version quoted. Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2021-09-16/debate/main Retrieved: 2026-08-14T04:49:34+00:00 Sitting date: 2021-09-16