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Ireland's political and cultural magazine
12 July 2022
M
EATH COUNTY Council (MCC) has
been accused of misleading the
Environmental Protection Agency
(EPA) in relation to the disposal
and removal of waste at a rare
salt marsh in Mornington.
While the controversy surrounding the illegal
dumping of waste, including toxic materials, on
two acres of the saltmarsh adjacent to the Boyne
Estuary goes back to 1997, startling revelations
concerning the provision of false information by
the local authority to the EPA have only emerged
in recent months.
In correspondence seen by Village, senior
ocials of MCC wrongly asserted that the waste
material, some of which was dumped in the
environmentally sensitive location by the local
authority itself, had been disposed of by a
company with a valid waste permit.
Landowner, John Moran, allowed the dumping
of waste on the sensitive site. It included rubble
and other material from major road building
projects carried out for the local authority.
In a letter to the EPA on 6 November, 2007, the
Council wrote that P Sheils Plant Hire Ltd, which
had a waste collection permit “was the main
contractor on the site and provided one
excavation machine and three tipper trucks to
Phantom
waste
removers
By Frank Connolly
Meath County Council
falsely claims dodgy
waste removed from
Boyne estuary by
Shiels contractors who
are suing it for fraud
Patrick Sheils, the owner of P Sheils Plant Hire,
has informed Village that he did not remove
any waste from the site despite the claim by
MCC’s senior engineer — he never had any
contract and received no payment from MCC
transport inert material”. However, Patrick
Sheils, the owner of the company, has confirmed
to the EPA and to Village that he was not involved
in the removal of the waste, had no tender to do
so, and received no payment for any such work.
The letter signed by Vincent Collins senior
engineer with MCC to Stephen McCarthy
Inspector with the EPA, was in response to a
notice of “advice & recommendations from the
EPA in accordance with Section 63(3)(a) of the
Environmental Protection Acts 1992 and 2003”
in relation to the removal of the waste from the
Mornington site.
The notice, issued in early September 2007,
according to the letter, “advised MCC that works
outlined in a risk assessment report prepared
by MCC for Moran’s site at Mornington, County
Meath should be carried out as agreed. These
works included the removal of approximately
500 tonnes of construction and demolition]
waste (concrete, bitumen etc).
The letter continued:
“On Monday and Tuesday 24th and 25th
September (2007) respectively, Meath County
Council supervised the works outlined above at
Moran’s site, Mornington. Paddy Sheils Plant
Hire Ltd. (Waste collection permit MH2002/005C)
was the main contractor on the site and provided
one excavation machine and 3 tipper trucks to
transport inert material”.
It later stated:
“In relation to the Construction and Demolition
NEWS
waste, the mounds of waste located on the site
were excavated and stored in a large pile. The
material was loaded into Paddy Sheils trucks
and delivered to a Roadstone site at
Mullaghchrone, Donore, County Meath…Paddy
Sheils has been granted permission to use this
site by Roadstone and the facility is listed in
Appendix B of his Waste Collection Permit. The
facility was willing to accept clean concrete only
at the time of the work and therefore
approximately 120 tonnes of clean concrete was
sent to Roadstone, Mullaghcrone, Donore, Co.
Meath”.
The letter later said that an “amount of mixed
waste present which included plastics, metals,
wood etc. was sent to Panda Waste Services
facility at Rathdrinagh, Beauparc, Navan, Co.
Meath”.
It said: “Paddy Sheils has been granted
permission to use this site by Panda Waste
Services and the facility is listed in Appendix B
of his Waste Collection Permit. This mixed waste
was separated using the excavator, loaded into
Paddy Sheils trucks and delivered to Panda
Waste. In total, approximately 150 tonnes of
mixed C & D waste was removed from the site”.
It was all made up.
Patrick Sheils, the owner of P Sheils Plant
Hire, has informed Village magazine that he did
not remove any waste from the site at
Mornington, County Meath as described in this
letter, never had any contract and received no
July 2022 13
payment from MCC in relation to any such work.
Neither did he allow MCC, or any other party,
permission to use his waste permit licence for
any purpose.
Following subsequent queries from the EPA in
relation to the remediation of the site, MCC
provided a dierent account of how and by
whom the waste material at the Mornington site
was removed.
In a further letter to Mr McCarthy of the EPA
from Ger Murphy, senior executive ocer of
Meath County Council on 19th May 2011, the
EPA is informed that:
“The recommendation was to remove
approximately 500 tonnes of C & D waste.
Remove bituminous material, creosoted fence
posts and burn timber to be excavated and
hence remove the source of pollution. The
material was removed to authorised facilities
using Pat Fallon Construction and Jim & Brian
Mulchrone Plant Hire Ltd.”
Village has learned that Pat Fallon, the owner
of Pat Fallon Construction was responsible for
illegally dumping much of the material and, in a
letter from MCC in June, 1997, was instructed to
ensure that no further waste was transferred to
the site.
“I understand that you may have dumped top
soil etc. on the land of John Moran at Mornington.
I have advised Mr Moran of the legal
requirements for operating such a facility and
requested that he immediately cease dumping
at this site”, said the letter from MCC, signed by
administrative ocer M Fitzpatrick.
“I would also point out that under the Waste
Management Act you are required to transfer the
Control of Waste to an Authorised person i.e.
either a Local Authority or a person with a waste
licence. Please ensure that no further waste is
transferred to this site”.
Other documents obtained by Village indicate
that the Council agreed to pay €600,000 for the
removal of more than 6000 tonnes of waste from
the site over a six-week period.
This estimate was prepared by senior
engineer, Tim O’ Leary, following an agreement
with the National Parks and Wildlife Service
(NPWS) which sought the removal of all of the
waste material which had been illegally
deposited on the “important wetland habitat”
of the salt marsh and was endangering birds and
vegetation.
In a letter to Mr Collins of MCC in May 2007,
the District Conservation Ocer for the NPWS,
Dr Maurice Eakin, wrote that “the ideal scenario
would be that the material is removed in its
entirety so as to reinstate the original habitat.
The material would need to be removed to a level
to allow flooding from the estuary/stream (tidal
interface)”.
villageThe correspondence between the EPA
and MCC between 1997 and 2011 was uncovered
by Phil Cantwell, a former independent
councillor in Trim, earlier this year. He wrote to
the EPA seeking to establish what action it
intended to take in relation to the misleading
information provided to it in 1997 concerning
the removal of waste from the site. Cantwell had
previously contacted MCC about the illegal
dumping of the waste and the threat to the
unique salt marsh in Mornington in 2016 but
was informed that it had been unable to locate
any relevant documents from the period.
In response to Cantwell, the EPA said that it
had closed its file on the matter in November
2011 “on the basis that the waste was removed
from the site to remediate it, and that the
National Parks and Wildlife Service were
satisfied that their objectives in the context of
this remediation had been achieved”.
In relation to the wrongful naming of Mr
Sheils as the person who carried out the work
with his waste permit, the letter from Caoimhín
Nolan, Inspector with the EPA, said that “if Mr
Shiels (sic) has concerns about the accuracy of
statements in the Meath County Council’s
correspondence to the EPA dated 6th November,
2007, then it is a matter for him to raise those
concerns directly with Meath County Council”.
Nolan continued: “The EPA also notes the
MCC provided a different
account of who removed
the waste: the material was
removed in part using Pat
Fallon Construction. Pat
Fallon was responsible for
illegally dumping much of
the material
content of Meath County Council’s letter to you
dated 26th September 2016 in response to your
request for all documents concerning
PAE2005/458 (the Mornington site) and their
statement that “I regret that despite an extensive
search we have been unable to locate the
specific documents/records you have requested
and while we are continuing with the search, the
passage of time elapsed since the material
removed makes it unlikely that such documents/
records will be located”.
“Considering the timeframe during which the
events referred to in your correspondence took
place, and the fact that the National Parks and
Wildlife service were satisfied with the condition
of the site after remediation works took place,
the EPA has no basis for taking any further
action in relation to this matter”.
In May, Village provided MCC with details of
its correspondence with the EPA between 1997
and 2011, as outlined in this article, and a series
of questions relating to the inaccurate
description of how the waste was removed from
the Mornington site, by whom and at what cost
to the local authority. MCC has not replied to
these queries.
Meanwhile, Paddy Sheils is pursuing a private
prosecution against MCC in the Trim Circuit
Court for an alleged fraud on his company, P
Sheils Plant Hire Ltd. He has alleged, as reported
extensively in Village, that ocials of the Council
assisted three of his former employees to obtain
monies owed to him for work his firm carried out
for the local authority during 2008 and 2009.
Two former employees, Sinéad McNamara
and David O’Donoghue set up a company called
PSPH Ltd (pending name change to Phoenix
Engineering), using the same initials as the
company owned by Paddy Sheils during the
period when the fraud was carried out.
After 2009, Phoenix Engineering obtained
lucrative plant hire contracts from MCC until it
laid o its employees and closed down in May,
2022.
