IF Fianna Fail returns to power after the forthcoming election, it will establish a fund to compensate communities bearing an unfair burden in disposing of the waste being generated by society generally.
Mr Noel Dempsey, the party's environment spokesman, said that even if a landfill dump was managed to the highest standards, it would inevitably result in increased traffic in the immediate area and, at least initially, a fall in property values.
"For these reasons, when you re telling people this is the site where the dump is being put, I think it's only reasonable that for every tonne of waste that goes in there, there's something going into a kitty for the benefit of the local community."
In an interview with The Irish Times on Fianna Fail's new environment policy, Mr Dempsey said there had been a generally positive reaction to the document - except from the plastics industry, which objected to its proposal for a tax on supermarket bags.
But wouldn't shoppers object to a levy on plastic bags, as Fianna Fail has proposed? "The remarkable thing about it is that this is the only area where anyone could talk about putting a tax on something that people would welcome overwhelmingly."
He feels very strongly about litter and criticised the Minister for the Environment, Mr Howlin, for having "nothing to show for the big hype" of his £500,000 anti-litter campaign. He also cited Co Louth's Litter Awareness Campaign as "the way to go".
There, the county council's litter pollution committee travels around the county meeting local groups, holding seminars on the environment and organising exhibitions. "If I get into the Custom House, I'll be funding projects like this, not a Saatchi and Saatchi litter promotion."
Regarding the party's support for "waste-to-energy", or incineration, as a waste disposal option, he said: "I know that there has to be a huge number of options other than digging the big hole."
To guard against incineration becoming the "easy option", as Greenpeace maintains, Mr Dempsey said it could only be introduced in the context of "a proper integrated waste management strategy to minimise, reduce, prevent and recycle waste".
Asked about the danger of dioxin emissions, he said this argument "is to a certain extent being won because these things can be controlled". But there was still the issue of transporting waste to any incinerator and he favoured a rail link rather than an army of trucks.
Under Fianna Fail, every Government department which has an impact on the environment - Agriculture, Energy, Enterprise and Employment, Tourism and Trade - would have an assistant secretary responsible for "eco-auditing" its activities.
There would also be a Cabinet sub-committee of the relevant ministers to ensure that the policies being pursued were in line with the concept of "sustainable development".
"As I see it, and I'm speaking personally on this one, the Department of the Environment is a contradiction," he said. "It's really a three-headed Department dealing with local government, infrastructural development and environmental protection."
He would reverse heritage conservation, presently under the aegis of the Department of Arts and Culture, into the Custom House so that all areas of environmental protection were under one roof, with a separate Department of Local Government and Development.
Mr Dempsey said he learned a lot from his time as Minister of State at the Office of Public Works, particularly about the need for consultation and partnership. Mullaghmore was "a learning experience which influenced me and the document I've now produced".
He had arrived in the OPW in the middle of the visitor centre controversy and, though he held about 24 consultations and "genuinely listened to everyone's point of view", he was "shocked" by the OPW's insistence that it had the power to proceed anyway.
"Even though it was traumatic enough for me, what with losing the Supreme Court case and all the rest of it, I have no hesitation now in saying that it is right and proper that the State should have to go through the normal planning process.
He admitted that agriculture was seen as the weakest section of Fianna Fail's environment policy. "There will have to be a fundamental review of the CAP aimed at providing more than subsidence levels of income to smaller farmers and rural areas generally. We talk about farmers owning the land, but they don't really own it. They have it on loan from the next generation," he declared. "So we have to devise schemes that do not make it necessary for sheep farmers to increase stocking levels and cause further damage."
Asked about the dichotomy between the high-minded aspirations of the policy document and the land rezoning activities of some Fianna Fail councillors, Mr Dempsey said he was "trying to turn the party around to make it pro-sustainable development".
The party's leader, Mr Ahern, had moved away from counting cranes on the skyline because he had "seen a lot of destruction in the name of progress". He had been "very encouraging and has also asked me to work in the area of deprived urban communities".
Mr Dempsey saw a lot of deprivation during last year's Dublin West by-election, with "houses, houses everywhere and very few facilities".
