ABSTRACT
A small, energy-deficient, newly industrialising, country such as Ireland inevitably faces a dilemma between fostering growth and imposing pollution abatement costs on its exporting industries. The most recent initiative in air pollution legislation was introduced in the Seanad on 10 February 1986 and became operative on 1 September 1987. The provisions of the Clean Air Act, introduced in 1964, have resulted in a steady drop in urban smoke levels throughout the mid 1960s and 1970s. A vigorous westerly wind regime facilitates the dispersal of indigenous air pollutants on most occasions, and minimises episodes of acid-rain-bearing easterlies from the United Kingdom and Europe. A policy of high stack dispersal is designed to enable heated effluent to penetrate both surface based and free air inversions of temperature and thus minimise the effects on ground level concentrations. It does however have implications in the area of acid rain which are examined in this chapter.
