Councillors still frustrated over illegal dumping
WITH all councillors in agreement that illegal dumping has reached epidemic levels across Co Wexford, Cllr Mary Farrell sought the positives at last week’s county council meeting, noting all the hard work done by the council’s rapid response clean-up crews.
‘I think the rapid response crews need to be congratulated,’ she said. ‘ They do amazing work on a daily basis and we also have a number of volunteers going around picking up other people’s rubbish. We have the likes of Tidy Towns groups, but also just individuals out walking and picking up bags of rubbish as they go.’
‘ The people responsible for this are ignorant and mean-spirited. It’s deliberate and shameful. All I can say to these people is shame on you. But I want to recognise the fantastic work being done by the environment department to tackle this.’
This was not to be the last mention of littering in the meeting. Cllr Willie Kavanagh pointed out that ‘it never seemed to be so much of a problem when the county council collected waste themselves. Could we not have a return to that and charge for the bins in Local Property Tax?’
Cllr John Fleming noted that the council issued 350 fines to illegal dumpers last year and asked if there was any follow up afterwards to see if the people involved were no disposing of their litter in the correct manner.
‘We sporadically check with people, but not all the time,’ Director of Services Carolyne Godkin said.
Cllr Pat Barden then proposed the establishment of a committee which would have ‘a legal professional, a member of the gardaí and a volunteer from each district’.
‘I’d also like us to engage with anyone who has been prosecuted for this to ask them why this is happening,’ he said. ‘If we could have a person in each parish to identify dumping hotspots, that would be great. We could tap into the GAA family and get people involved in their own areas.’
Chief Executive of the County Council Tom Enright agreed that there could be merit in this and suggested that this committee be set up as a sub-committee of the Environment Strategic Policy Committee (SPC).
‘I think it’s a good idea to engage with GAA clubs on this,’ he said. ‘ There are 49 clubs around the county and I’m sure they’d be happy to help. I’d suggest that this be brought back before the SPC.’
The subject of dumping returned later on in the meeting again, as Cllr Joe Sullivan put forward a motion calling for the council to make recycling services free of charge at bring centres around the county.
Mr Enright, however, didn’t believe that it would make much difference.
‘We’ve talked to the staff at the recycling centres and when there is no charge at all, people tend to come more often with smaller amounts of recycling,’ he said. ‘It’s a more efficient operation when there’s a small charge. Also, as set out in the budget, the income from these charges pays for our rapid response crews.’
Mr Enright again suggested that the discussion go before the Environment SPC, and Cllr Sullivan agreed, saying: ‘Okay, but this is something that’s getting worse and we need ideas to reverse the trend. All I want is to be able to go walking on a clean road.’
Cllr Cathal Byrne also had a motion with the aim of tackling dumping. He sought the members’ approval to write to Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan to amend the Litter Pollution act to set out clear framework for the use of CCTV to prosecute illegal dumpers. He received unanimous support for the motion and it was agreed that a letter would be drafted to the Minister.
Meanwhile Cllr George Lawlor put forward another motion urging the government to alter GDPR legislation to ensure that CCTV can be used to protect communities against crime and littering and to allow councillors to be given access to housing allocation information ‘ to enable fair and transparent allocation of housing resources’.
‘I’ve paid for CCTV cameras for Min Ryan park and the amount of hoops we have to jump through to get them installed is ludicrous,’ Cllr Lawlor said. ‘ The council is not out to compromise data protection, but to do something in the common good.’
Cllr Lawlor also noted that members may make representations for constituents on housing issues and make a number of phone calls, but in the end never be told whether they have been allocated a house or not due to GDPR issues.
Cllr Davy Hynes agreed with his colleague on the second point in particular.
‘We’re being treated with total disrespect,’ he said.
‘It happens all the time. You have people that you’ve made calls and sent emails for, but you never know if they’ve actually been sorted when the houses are allocated. They treat us like mushrooms - keep us in the dark and feed us plenty of manure!’
Cllr Lawlor’s motion also received the unanimous support of his colleagues.