Litter Litter Everywhere.. costing Dublin City Council €650,000 per annum
A recent survey of 40 Irish cities, towns and urban areas found that 70{b050ebef00e2b6e935b95b021e9f55f4ab20ffeed47f29e2aa25a2081fec5bc8} of the towns, cities and urban areas surveyed were found to be “clean to European norms” in 2016. The survey was conducted by An Taisce on behalf of the Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) 
This was an improvement on the results of a 2015 survey but was disappointingly less that the 85{b050ebef00e2b6e935b95b021e9f55f4ab20ffeed47f29e2aa25a2081fec5bc8} found in 2014. The report was particularly damming of Dublin. It said that there was a “disappointing deterioration” in the cleanliness of the capital, with a high number of blackspots in Dublin’s north inner city. These areas included the North Inner City and Ballymun. And the report described Balbutcher Lane as being “characterised by dumping”. Both Dublin city centre and Limerick city slipped to join Galway city as “moderately littered”. Conor Horgan of the IBAL stated that “the poor showing by our cities generally goes some way to explaining the overall increase in litter levels. Last year all our major cities other than Dublin were clean; this time round the majority are littered.” Galvone in Limerick City, Farranree in Cork City and Dublin Noth Inner City were the most littered areas in Ireland being described as “seriously littered”. Meanwhile Letterkenny, Ballymun and Mahon in Cork City were described as “littered” . It is however n
ot suprising that such activity continues when in Dublin City alone, last year two thirds of illegal dumping fines are not paid. This is in spite of the fact that it cost €650,000 to collect this illegally dumped litter. It is estimated that nearly one million euo per annum would be saved by Dublin City Council if proper enforcement and prosecution were in place for littering offences.
While Kildare Cleans Up
Meanwhile the accolade for the cleanest town goes to Kildare, followed by Roscommon, Ashbourne and Waterford, with all being described as “Cleaner than European Norms”. Maybe this explains where the Kildare nickname “lilywhites” originated and why on this ocassion they are truly champions.