Three green fields and one dump

If the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland are to be successfully unified at some point in the future, it might be in the interests of the Republic to ensure that Northern Ireland is not a toxic dump by the time that happens. And it appears that one trend in the Republic is pushing towards that scenario, namely the country's schizophrenia about its rapid growth. With the economic boom has come by-the-book consumerist problems and specifically what to do with all the waste and by-products of the boom, and all the stuff that is not wanted anymore (e.g. whatever consumer durables were purchased this time last year). Pick up any provincial newspaper in the Republic and you won't have to search far for the story of the pressure group blocking any expansion of the local dump. The consequence has been that the Republic is now an exporter of waste.

Now, "exporter" was understood to imply that the waste was heading across a body of water, but now it emerges that quite a bit of it was going, illegally, to Northern Ireland. It's tempting to make the hypocrisy accusation at this point -- the strength of identification that might otherwise be claimed with those Irish across the border suddenly disappears under a mountain of rubbish. To be fair, the average Irish householder whose rubbish winds up in, say, in Dungannon, has little or no idea where the trash is going -- but he does know that he doesn't want to think about it once he puts it outside the door. But in any event, the time-honoured skills of smuggling are now being applied to trash, as this BBC story explains:

It is believed there are dozens of illegal dump sites containing tens of thousands of tons of rotting rubbish from household bins and industry across Ireland.

The waste is bring brought into Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland and has made some of the criminals behind the practice into millionaires. ..

Steve Aston, head of Waste Management at the DoE said: "We are talking about the discovery of one to two new illegal landfills on a weekly basis."

But the DoE say the problem is set to get worse.

There is a crisis in the waste industry in the Republic.

Major councils have closed their landfill sites because they are full. They have no alternatives and admit to "exporting" their waste.

Look for the Republic's waste disposal millionaires to legitimise their wealth with investments in British soccer teams.