Dundalk cllrs seek action on clothing banks following IBAL results

Councillors at the Dundalk Municipal District July meeting have called for action in relation to rubbish being dumped at clothing and bottle banks in the area, and said they disagreed with the results of the latest Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) survey, which deemed Dundalk the most littered town in the country.

During a lengthy discussion at the July meeting on the matter, councillors highlighted the work done by voluntary groups, including Dundalk Tidy Towns, saying that they believed the results of the survey did not reflect the ongoing work being done by both groups and individuals. 

Cllr Maeve Yore was first to raise the issue asking if the Council could ensure there were litter bins outside fast food outlets, and to see if it could force outlets to mark the food containers with the name of the outlet so it could be fined when its food packaging was found dumped in the area.

Cllr Yore also asked who owns the waste ground where clothes and bottle banks are installed across the Dundalk MD area and who is responsible for them.

Cllr Emma Coffey highlighted that the town was now at the bottom of the table of towns in the report, having gone from moderately littered last year to severely littered.

Cllr Coffey asked if there was a register with Louth County Council for clothing banks, saying that it was quite clear that there is an issue with clothing banks, either on private property or on the edge of publicly owned property. She wondered if there was a mechanism that the advertisers of the clothing banks, whose names are "emblazoned all over" the clothing banks, that could allow them be fined for not keeping their clothing banks in order.

Cllr Coffey went on to highlight the work being done by Tidy Towns groups, particularly since the Covid pandemic, in engaging with the local community and "looking after your own patch." She said it is "very disappointing for those groups and the individuals in the locality of Dundalk that we're at this stage".

The Dundalk South councillor added that she would "note with interest if our Chief Executive will make the pledge that she made to Drogheda a number of years ago when they were in a similar situation", telling the meeting, that the Louth County Council Chief Executive Joan Martin, said she would provide some funding to support the upgrade and the overseeing of tidying of Drogheda.

Telling the members that Dundalk is the principal town of the county, Cllr Coffey said that Dundalk is a town with a lot of heritage, with the SEEK festival happening to "international acclaim", and "to be in a survey that has national significance such as IBAL as one of the most littered towns is disappointing", adding that she would be "interested hearing the Chief Executive's comments at the county meeting as to what steps Louth County Council will do" to improve Dundalk's results.

Acknowledging the work done by the volunteers in Tidy Towns and the support and engagement with Louth County Council through "a lot of work, not just from councillors but across the board with executives and personnel within Louth County Council", Cllr Coffey said that she "would hate to see fatigue come in because of this disappointing result, through no reflection of the people involved."

Cllr John Reilly enquired if clothing banks could be regulated by Louth County Council, saying that the survey was “grossly unfair”. Cllr Reilly pointed to the work that has been done on the town, especially in the build up to the President Biden visit, saying that he didn't think the marking system reflected the town. 

Senior Executive Engineer Paddy Connolly said he would have to find out more and get back to the councillors on clothing banks.

Cllr Tomás Sharkey added to the discussion at the meeting, saying that "Tidy Towns in Dundalk needs to be given every congratulations possible", and that he ignores the IBAL report as it looks at “a tiny number of areas” and "did not look at the areas that have come on in leaps and bounds in the last couple of years".

Cllr Sharkey said the report identified the issue of clothing banks but that they would deal with it "when we get our heads to it", and also the approach road from the N53 the Castletown Road, in relation to food related litter, but added that "they're things that we can sort out."

Cllr Sharkey also pointed to fast food operators putting their name on their bags, but also mentioned the issue of vapes which were becoming a major littering issue, and also cannisters from nitrous oxide, that are appearing on footpaths and on grass verges. He said that nitrous oxide (laughing gas) was a drug "that's being used on our streets in the evenings and at the weekends and its being shared around", and that "we can see the evidence of it and we need to get in front of this problem before it gets worse."

Cllr Kevin Meenan told the meeting that "we have to look at the whole culture of dumping in this country" and that IBAL didn't take into account "the massive work of Tidy Towns", adding that it "could be discouraging people to actually get involved".

Cllr Meenan mentioned that he had been in Copenhagen some months earlier and that there was no bins but there was also no dumping of rubbish and the place was very clean. He added that "our housing estates are destroyed with dumping" and that it can't be left with Tidy Towns people to fix, further adding that between local authorities, "we need to have a serious sit down and think and look at how we tackle this."

Cllr Conor Keelan was very critical of the IBAL report and those who carried out the survey. Mentioning that Dundalk has retained its Tidy Towns gold medal, he highlighted that the town also increased its points in the competition last year, and didn't "get that by doing nothing."

Cllr Edel Corrigan told the meeting that it wasn't the fast food takeaways that are dumping the litter and pointed to the users that are. Cllr Corrigan put forward reviewing at Strategic Policy Committees (SPC) level, the use of materials, including compostable materials, that are used by these fast food outlets.

Cllr Corrigan also said that when they get funding for litter programmes, they need to be community led prgrammes, adding that "there's no point contracting out works to remove waste materials and local communities having no involvement and no ownership of that."

The Dundalk-Carlingford councillor added that she was not a believer in not having bins, telling the meeting that she was abroad recently and it was a "horrendous experience", as she spent four days wading through rubbish on parts of the streets because there was no bins, and where there were bins they were overflowing.

Cllr Corrigan further added that they need to look at what they doing because it is not working. She said that it shouldn't be left to one or two members of staff such as litter wardens to deal with, but suggested that "maybe we need to look at opening out those powers to members of our tidy towns" and enable them to enforce litter laws.

Cathaoirleach Cllr Seán Kelly concluded the discussion by saying that the clear message from the meeting was that the IBAL result was not reflective of the the town, that he didn't think anyone would say Dundalk is a dirty town, and that it has made massive strides in the past couple of years in the town centre and local areas, highlighting the work done in the SEEK festival and by Dundalk Tidy Towns, saying they should not be disheartened by the IBAL result.

Cllr Kelly said that the day the IBAL adjudicators picked to inspect the town was unfortunate, as two days after the inspection, two of the blackspots mentioned in the report had been cleaned. Cllr Kelly added that Dundalk Tidy Towns indicated that they wanted to meet the Municipal District councillors in Dundalk.

Cllr Kelly further added that there is an education piece that needs to be communicated to the public in relation to litter. He gave an example by telling the meeting that an area at the back of Pearse Park in Dundalk, which the local community have designated a biodiversity area and are letting grass and vegetation grow, is being used by some to dump rubbish in the long grass.