Two men who allowed their land in Northern Ireland to be used to dump illegal waste from the Republic have been hit with hard penalties under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Under the Act, Turlough Breslan from Portadown was subject to a confiscation order of £166,697, while Bernard Barrett from Tyrone was forced to pay £100,000.
During a site visit in August 2006, officers from the Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA), discovered that Breslan had been illegally keeping around 8,000 tonnes of controlled waste. The waste came from an animal feed company in the Republic and was being kept without a waste management licence being in place for the site in Dungannon.
An inspection under warrant was carried out in December 2006, in which NIEA officers interviewed Breslan under caution. Breslan was also given a three year conditional discharge under the Waste and Contaminated Land Order (Northern Ireland) SI 1997/2778.
Barrett had also been taking unlicensed waste from the Republic and using it to fill in his sand and gravel quarry. NIEA officers had estimated that the quarry had been filled with a minimum of 6,500 tonnes of municipal waste.
Handing down the sentence, Judge Gemma Loughran reminded Barrett about the need to protect the environment.
Cross-border dumping has been a significant problem, with cowboy contractors seeking to avoid costs by fly-tipping on an industrial scale.
