End of 2023 for complete removal of illegal North Tipp waste

A HUGE amount of waste has been transported from a site near Rathcabbin village to the County Landfill during recent months.
Cllr Michael O'Meara told The Midland Tribune that he's very happy with the scale and the speed of the removal work. “There was an enormous volume of waste in Shannon Vermicomposting,” he remarked, “but we are getting through it at a good rate. It looks likely that the last of it will have been removed by the end of 2023.”
Tipperary County Council has been transporting four truck-loads of waste per day from Rathcabbin.
It is the endgame of a saga which has been ongoing since 2003.
In the latter half of 2003 locals began complaining about an “appalling smell” coming from the company Shannon Vermicomposting which was located near the village. Shannon Vermicomposting had received planning permission for ten mushroom tunnels and ten composting units. Under that permission, the composting units were to supply compost for the ten mushroom tunnels. However, local councillors pointed out that the company had grown way beyond what was stated in the planning permission and there was unauthorised waste material now on the site, being driven in by trucks from various locations in Ireland.
Eventually the County Council took a successful case against the company in the courts and the company had to close down in 2005.
Left behind was a very large amount of material stockpiled on concrete slabs and adjacent lands. This material was stored in large piles of approximately 35,000 cubic metres under plastic covers. The plastic covers were kept in place with approximately 21,500 tyres of varying sizes (car, lorry and oversized tyres). Approximately 189 cubic metres of leachate was also stored in 22 underground tanks (the leachate was subsequently removed by Tipperary County Council).
The compost material stored at the site included “sewage sludge and food waste.”
It was also stated that the compost material “displays low respiration activity in the upper reaches of the piles and can broadly be classified as a 'stabilised biowaste' material."
In early 2022 the Council finally began transporting the waste to the landfill site at Ballaghveny.