PAC Hears €17.91M Of Clean-Up Costs Spent On Former Landfill Site In Baltinglass

Tuesday, 14 July 2026 14:41

By Daniel Maher

The "illegal" site closed in 2001

A recent disclosure to the Public Accounts Committee has found that €17.91M has been spent on remediation costs for the Whitestown landfill site near Baltinglass.

€7.8M of this has been provided to the council by the Department through the National Landfill Remediation Grant Scheme.

The "illegal" site closed in 2001.

The Department also states that Wicklow County Council estimates the remaining remediation works will cost between €32M and €38M over the period from 2026 to 2031.

Sinn Féin TD for Wicklow and Chair of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) has said that he will be writing to Wicklow County Council for a detailed response following the revelations of these figures.

He said that the site had been "marked by a litany of failures" since it's closure 25 years ago.

There was a previous remediation plan that the council deemed successful in 2014, and proceedings were launched in the High Court after this.

However, in July 2017, after a 53 day hearing, the judge concluded that the botched remediation plan left about 93% of the waste on site and he directed that the council remove waste and remediate the site.

"We now know that medical waste, industrial waste and hazardous waste have all been discovered at what was the largest illegal dump in Ireland, including syringes and other medical equipment that were illegally disposed of at the site."

Deputy Brady said that “the people of Wicklow have endured the consequences of this environmental disaster for more than a generation" adding that they deserve " full transparency, proper accountability for every euro spent, and certainty that this environmental disaster will finally be resolved".