This article is from page 4 of the 2007-04-03 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 4 JPG
KILRUSH farmer, Jackie Whelan, yesterday challenged claims made by the IFFPG that farm plastic was being imported illegally into Ireland.
The IFFPG secured millions of euro in funding from the Department of the Environment to collect illegally imported plastic last year.
Mr Whelan, who operates a glass
recycling company, is planning to set up a farm plastic recycling company to compete with the IFFPG in Clare this year.
‘The farmer was charged for the col- lection of this plastic and the excuse given by the IFFPG was that there was illegal plastic being imported that was not subject to the usual levy. This sim- ply does not hold water. Who do they think is importing it? Who is selling
it? I can’t see it,’ said Mr Whelan.
“T intend to put in place my own plastic recycling company to deal with this plastic and not have to send it to Scotland. If there were two or three recycling plants around Ireland we could recycle all of our plastic over here and not be paying €50 a tonne to have it recycled in Scotland.
“Or we wouldn’t have to be burning up fuel driving it all over the country
to get it recycled.”
Whelan’s claims were yesterday re- futed by Sean Campbell of the IFF- PG.
‘He was telling me about that two years ago and if he was ever going to do something like that he would have done it already. Jackie Whelan might think that he knows something about it but he hasn’t got a clue,” said Camp- ode