councillor Cadogan Enright has been conducting a year-long campaign to free up £3 million he believed was wrongly paid into capital reserves to cover the cost of decommissioning Drumnakelly dump.

“I believe we have over-accrued as we are not taking into account long-term revenues from the same site from generating renewable energy. These funds should be paid into the general revenue account. This will give room for councillors to reverse many the sillier cuts in front-line services made in the council budget earlier this year. For instance the ban on overtime for joint patrols against drinking and anti-social behaviour at night-time and at weekends was clearly a mistake. These patrols between our Enforcement officers and the PSNI have been a huge success in areas like Killough.“ Said Councillor Enright.

Cadogan Enright pointed out that “I have referred what I felt was an error to the internal auditor in council last year and asked for an investigation. I felt that in addition to the over-provision for landfill, we were not properly factoring in between £200,000 and £400,000 per annum of potential income from renewable energy and landfill gas”.

“Management did not carry out a full cost benefit analysis for the wind-turbine on the landfill site, and were thinking about renting out the site to a third party for a fraction of what it was worth in revenue to the council. I had my own cost benefit analysis carried out by professionals and obtained figures which suggest that council could easily raise a quarter of a million pounds a year from a combination of landfill gas and wind energy. Over the last 2 years management have failed to meet their modest budget targets for revenues from these sources and have been burning off our methane gas. By contrast Newry and Mourne have been earning good money from landfill gas electricity generation for years”. Cllr Enright said.