The High Court has ruled that a waste licence is personal to the holder and does not authorise another company to carry out waste treatment at the same facility without a licence transferred through the statutory process. It upheld the District Court’s decision that Midland Scrap Metal Company Limited had no defence to a charge of recovering or disposing of waste without a licence.
The appeal concerned a conviction under the Waste Management Acts 1996 to 2008. The District Court had found that Midland Scrap Metal carried out waste activities at a facility in Cookstown Industrial Estate, Tallaght, without holding a licence for those activities. The High Court was asked whether a licence issued to another person for that facility could provide a defence.
A licence for processing certain wastes at the site was issued in 2000 and transferred to Greenstar Materials Recovery Limited in 2004. Greenstar remained the licence holder during the period covered by Midland Scrap Metal’s summons. Greenstar’s licensed activities had ceased in 2006, and the facility had no waste activity until Midland Scrap Metal moved in during 2008.
The District Court found that Midland Scrap Metal handled metal waste through sorting, shearing, baling and slicing, using new equipment and conducting activities different from Greenstar’s. Inspectors visited while the company was engaged in waste recovery or disposal. The District Court also recorded that Greenstar had pleaded guilty in 2012 to a separate charge concerning waste activities at the facility that breached its licence conditions, and had been fined.
Midland Scrap Metal argued that the legislation licensed the activity rather than requiring the person carrying it out to hold the licence. It said it operated under an arrangement with Greenstar, which remained responsible as licence holder. The Environmental Protection Agency argued that the licence was personal to Greenstar, given the statutory assessment of a licensee’s fitness, expertise and financial capacity, and the controls on transferring a licence.
Justice Mac Eochaidh agreed with the Agency. He said allowing a licence holder to pass the permission to a third party without regulatory approval would undermine the licensing regime and its fitness assessment. He also rejected the argument that regulations referring to a facility “operator” allowed a different person to assume the licensee’s role.
The court concluded that the District Court was correct in law: Greenstar’s licence did not provide Midland Scrap Metal with a defence. The High Court answered the case stated on that basis. The judgment does not set out a new sentence or fine for Midland Scrap Metal.