Two border counties have spent more than €1.6 million on the clean-up of toxic sludge

Ken Foxe

Two border counties have spent more than €1.6 million on the clean-up of toxic sludge from illegal diesel laundering plants over the past five years.

Since 2020, Louth County Council said it spent €1.12 million on dumping by fuel smugglers while Monaghan County Council said its bill was almost €500,000.

The two local authorities said there had been more than 222 clean-up operations in the period between 2020 and midway through last year.

Each of them cost an average of €7,300 with Louth County Council forced to spend €156,000 in a single quarter in 2023 dealing with a large-scale dumping incident.

Costs have been rising in that county as well with the clean-up almost doubling from €188,000 in 2020 to €361,000 in 2023.

Two other councils, Donegal and Cavan, said they had no costs relating to clean-up from diesel laundering and that it was not an issue affecting their county.

The diesel laundries operate by washing out a green dye that is placed in rebated green fuel, or marked mineral oil, to make it colourless.

When the fuel is ‘cleaned’ however, it leaves behind a damaging toxic sludge that is often simply dumped by the roadside for councils to clean up.

A spokesman for Monaghan County Council said the dumping of ‘diesel wash’ in their county had been an issue for around twenty-five years.

He said they had dealt with a very significant number of dumping incidents that had resulted in “very substantial cleanup and disposal costs” for the Irish taxpayer.

He said: “The aftermath of diesel laundering continues to give rise to significant costs in the county and creates a potential environmental and health and safety hazard.”

He urged anybody with knowledge of diesel laundering or the dumping of waste to report incidents to their local garda station.

Asked about their more than €1 million spent on tackling illegal waste from fuel smuggling, a spokesman for Louth County Council said they were working closely with gardaí and Revenue to tackle the problem