Limerick estate clean-up cost more than €350,000
CLEANING UP after illegal dumping in a Limerick city estate has cost local taxpayers more than €350,000.
Limerick City and County Council has revealed it has spent a total of €354,000 on employing contract staff to clean up the illegal littering in St Mary’s Park between 2019 and now.
The cost came to light following a question to this month’s metropolitan district meeting from Labour councillor Conor Sheehan.
“There’s an awful lot of tax payers’ money being spent cleaning this up and it’s a very small minority of people doing it,” the councillor said, referring to dumping.
“The vast majority of people just want a community to take pride in, a community to be clean,” he added.
Councillor Sheehan feels the only way illegal dumping will stop is for people to be prosecuted.
But, as it stands, data protection laws prevent local authorities using surveillance cameras to catch people dumping.
It’s a situation the Environment Minister Eamon Ryan is planning to change, but has not as of yet.
“This again reinforces the need for the Environment Minister to sign the statutory instrument around the circular economy bill which will allow local authorities to use CCTV for the purposes of prosecuting illegal dumping, which they can't do at the moment,” said Cllr Sheehan.
“It’s really not fair on the ordinary decent people who live in St Mary’s Park and have to put up with this,” he added.
Cork Labour TD Sean Sherlock asked a parliamentary question on when the new laws will be in place.
In a written reply, Mr Ryan stated that the Local Government Management Agency (LGMA) is working to finalise draft codes of practice needed for surveillance cameras.
Officials in his department will then feed back the volume of work required to bring this through to the LGMA.
Once this is completed, the LGMA will then formally submit the draft codes of practice back to him for approval.