Just 42% of litter fines paid in Louth since 2018

Just 1,316 out of 3,115 Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) issued by Louth County Council between the years 2018 and 2022 have been paid, it was revealed at the Dundalk Municipal District March Meeting.

Cllr Antóin Watters had submitted a question to the local authority in advance of the March meeting, asking the local authority, “How many fines were issued for the last five years for illegal dumping and how many have been paid?”

Replying to Cllr Watters' question, Director of Organisational Development, Joe McGuinness gave the following information:

Cllr Watters told the Dundalk Democrat following the meeting, that he submitted the question in relation to illegal dumping as he feels that it is “a blight on our whole area”, was wondering how many fines the local authority had issued and how many were paid, and “how much money are the Council down as a result of it.”

Examining the figures, Cllr Watters said, “basically when I looked at the figures, there's 42% of the fines have been paid.”

Cllr Watters based the revenue it would have yielded on a standard fixed fine amount of €150, and said that, “it's not enough, there's €270,000 outstanding, there's just over €197,000 paid out of €467,000, so its a significant amount.”

The Dundalk-Carlingford councillor said that he had raised the issue of illegal dumping at the last Louth County Council with Director of Services for Placemaking and Physical Development, Catherine Duff.

Cllr Watters had asked about the costs involved and about how illegal dumping was affecting the Council, with Ms Duff replying to say that it was overwhelming resources and that the Council has set up a new task force to look at dealing with the issue.

“I welcome that”, he commented, “but it really needs to be a cross sectional/department approach in the Council that we need, to look at every aspect of this.”

The Sinn Féin councillor went on to say that “what I'm going to focus on at the next full council meeting is around enforcement and where we can go with this. I'm also working on stuff with Ruairi Ó Murchú TD in relation to fines as a whole and the costs involved in it and about trying to tighten the whole thing up”.

Cllr Watters further added, “people need to be paying more than what they're paying because it's not deterring them.”