Areas deemed littered at lowest level in five years - but Dublin and Cork have 'deteriorated'
THE NUMBER OF areas around the country deemed littered is at its lowest level in five years, according to the group Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL).
The survey of 40 towns and cities, which is carried out by the environment NGO An Taisce on behalf of IBAL, found that two-thirds of towns were clean overall, an increase on last year.
Naas topped the ranking for the second year in a row, ahead of Ennis and Killarney.
However, the IBAL survey said that while Dublin and Cork city centres have improved in advance of the peak season for visitors, the capital's North Inner City and Cork Northside have both 'deteriorated'.
Cork Northside fell to 'seriously littered', while Dublin's North Inner City, also seriously littered, came out at the bottom of the survey. Only two of the 25 sites surveyed in the area warranted a clean grade – the lowest number in years.
'Considerable improvements' were noted at some Dublin sites previously deemed as heavily littered, including Middle Abbey Street, O'Connell Street, North Frederick Street and beside the Jervis Luas.
Among the litter blackspots found were Spencer Dock, which suffered from dumping of household items; Dorset Lane, where large black sacks, a mattress and clothing items were strewn about; and the environs of the Royal Canal, where sacks of rubbish and other miscellaneous items, including some tents, featured among the litter.
It said that dumping on Dominic Lane and a littered basement on Parnell Square prevented Dublin from attaining 'clean' status.
IBAL
IBAL
'Unfortunately litter was everywhere in the North Inner City, in stark contrast to the City Centre just a few streets away,' IBAL's Conor Horgan said.
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Horgan said the negative impact of waste collection by bags instead of bins 'appears greater than ever'.
He added that there would likely be 'no progress' in the North Inner City without a ban on bags, and called on Dublin City Council to convert the city to bin collection services.
Businesses in Dublin city centre
will be banned from leaving their waste in plastic bags for collection
from 16 September.
The top nine places in Ireland that were deemed 'cleaner than European norms' are as follows, and in this order: Naas, Ennis, Killarney, Leixlip, Monaghan, Sligo, Tullamore, Waterford City and Wicklow.
Deposit Return Scheme
Only four areas were branded littered or seriously littered overall, including Ballybane in Galway and Tallaght in Dublin.
An Taisce inspectors found the environs of Dublin Airport, which are 'normally clean', to be moderately littered. Ballymun, Carlow, Fermoy, Longford and Navan were also among some of the areas found to be moderately littered.
The survey noted that plastic bottle and can litter is down 50% on previous levels, a year on from the introduction of the Deposit Return Scheme.
However, it said this kind of litter was still found in 20% of the 500-plus sites surveyed across the country.
'We hope that the scheme will see the disappearance of this litter, but statistics so far do not bear this out,' Horgan said, adding that cans and plastic bottles 'are far from a rare sight on our streets and in our hedgerows'.
The survey also found that the prevalence of coffee cups on streets across the country remains stubbornly high.
But there was a fall-off in disposable vape litter. Last year, Cabinet
approved draft legislation
to ban the sale of disposable vapes in Ireland.
A ban on selling the products in Northern Ireland and the UK came into effect on 1 June.
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Did you ever enter a contest to see who could lift a corpse? No? Not recently? Maybe you wrestled over a corpse then, or played cards, handing the deceased their own hand. No? Not that one either. Ok, last one - did you ever hide under a corpse, shaking it to scare the incoming mourners - especially the kids. No? Well, don't worry. It's not you, it's me. In truth, these questions would only make sense to someone who lived in Ireland 100 years ago. We called them wake games and right up until the middle of the last century, these farewells to our loved ones were packed full of mischief, merriment, and matchmaking. It was a time for divine madness, drinking and kissing and the presence of mná caointe, keening women, who wailed and sang, lamenting our dead. To give you more of a flavour, one game involved someone donning a collar and sitting in a corner to 'hear confessions'. 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Tell me, great-grandmother Horgan, did you ever inject poison into your face? No, seriously, did you ever inject your face with something that would make you look younger than you are? Ancestor of 100 years ago, your doctor or your dentist – did they ever put something in your face, Botox or fillers, to make you appear younger than you are? What's crazier? Playing games over a corpse or paying doctors and dentists to give Botox injections? Or put it another way – What's crazier? Accepting death as an inherent part of living and marking it as a whole community, or denying we age and die at all. What's more concerning, the cheeky sneaky Botox or the obvious Botox? According to a Women's Health and Wellbeing Survey, commissioned by the Irish Examiner, and involving over 1,000 women, 'one in 10 women states their GP offers cosmetic treatments and one in seven that their dentist does'. What do you think? 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