A new Stormont Animal Health Science building and animal incinerator has been approved despite concerns about air quality.
At Belfast City Council ’s Planning Committee this week, an application by the Department for Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs to replace Northern Ireland’s main animal health and food safety laboratory, the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute veterinary laboratory at Stoney Road, East Belfast, was approved by a majority vote. The Green Party voted against the application while People Before Profit abstained.
The proposal involves the development of a new, replacement Animal Health Sciences Building with a general stores building, post-mortem suite and carcass incineration facility, and associated works. None of the statutory consultees have raised any objections, nor were any objections from third parties received by the council.
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However, Green Councillor Áine Groogan said she could not back the application as she believed air quality impact assessments regarding the incinerator had not been forwarded, including a response from DAERA’s own Northern Ireland Environment Agency. She proposed deferring the application for assessments, without success.
She told the committee: “I don’t feel equipped with the information in front of me to look at this application.” She said: “From what I can see on the planning portal, there is a preliminary air quality, and it talks about a detailed assessment that I don’t see. It feels like we are pre-judging an application.”
A council planning officer responded by stating: “The applicant explained that until they have a final contract that there were some elements that they weren’t going to have the final details on, and that Environmental Health were content in those circumstances to negatively condition the final air quality management plan.”
An agent for the applicant told the committee: “This will be an important showcase for Northern Ireland’s science infrastructure capacity and leading edge capability in the animal health and sciences sectors.”
Dr Alistair Carson, DAERA’s Chief Scientific Advisor said: “The functions of the Animal Health and Science building are essentially threefold, namely the provision of statutory testing and analytical services, emergency response provision, and research.”
He added: “DAERA has designated the specialist laboratory as the official laboratory to undertake the vast majority, that is 95 percent plus, of animal health testing and food safety testing for which the department is responsible. There is no other laboratory in Northern Ireland with a capacity and capability to undertake these functions.
“In addition the Veterinary Sciences Division is currently a UK national reference laboratory for a number of testing programmes for animal disease and food safety.”
He said: “The new Animal Health Sciences Building will replace the 1960’s Veterinary Sciences Division main building which is no longer fit for purpose. The new Animal Health Sciences Building will be an industry leading science facility for Northern Ireland, of high quality design, which will enhance NI’s scientific platform and research capabilities.”
Another representative for the Stormont department said: “It is quite normal, and actually a legislative requirement in Northern Ireland procurement, that we can’t produce the final information at this stage in the process. But we are fully aware that we will have to do so before this equipment will be installed, and certainly before it will be able to be operated.
“We are not trying to hide anything, we are just not physically able to produce the info at this stage.”
Dr Alistair Carson said: “The incinerator is linked to the post mortem suite, and is related to the disposal of carcass parts that have been part of overall post mortems from disease diagnostics. A small amount of ash will be produced from the incineration, carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, just the key elements - with very tight biosecurity arrangements, both for the incinerator and the overall diagnostics suite.” He said "very small" and "negligible" amounts of "material" would be going into the incinerator.
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Pics from council agenda, permitted use for all
Captions by Michael Kenwood
Caption 1: CGI artist's impression of the new DAERA lab 1
Caption 2: CGI artist's impression of the new DAERA lab 1
