‘What’s the agenda?’ - Frustration in Carlow over low ranking in litter survey

A number of councillors have expressed their frustration over Carlow Town’s position in the latest Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) Survey.

Carlow finished 35th out of 40 towns surveyed for the organisation’s Anti-Litter League for 2025.

The IBAL report stated that Carlow’s low ranking was based on the presence of just one ‘clean’ site in the town - the lowest such number of all the towns surveyed.

It added that Carlow could have finished lower if not for a number of sites that just missed out on the top grade.

Carlow Train Station, Staplestown Road and the Oakley Park estate were noted as the most-littered sites in the report.

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Fianna Fáil councillor Fintan Phelan voiced his opposition to the results of the report at the January plenary meeting of Carlow County Council.

Cllr Phelan said: “In relation to the Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) Survey, could I ask do they have much engagement with the local authority?

“It seems that the overall look and feel of the town has significantly improved over the last number of years and that’s borne out in Entente Floralele and other competitions.

“Carlow does look, feel and is smarter, better and tidier but yet consistently in this one particular survey, we are marked down consistently.

“[When] one premise improves in private ownership, they seem to go to another premises and mark it down. So what’s the criteria, who funds them and what’s the agenda?”

In response to Cllr Phelan, Coilín O’Reilly, Chief Executive of Carlow County Council said that he raised a valid point.

He recalled having to ring IBAL last year over an error it made in its 2024 survey.

“This time last year, I had the occasion to ring them because they had included Prumplestown Cross and marked us down for a place that is eight kilometres from Carlow, in Kildare.

“I don’t know the criteria, I don’t know the logic. It’s based on an inspection a half a day twice a year.

Mr O’Reilly says he prefers to judge Carlow based on his own experience and the experience of people in Carlow.

He continued: “I judge Carlow town when I walk down to get a cup of coffee, when I walk down to get my lunch, when I come in in the morning and go for a wander down around the town park just to get a bit of air.

“I think Carlow Town is one of the cleanest places I’ve ever been in and I’m honest about that.

“We had the Director of Services for Community from every local authority in the country in the Woodford Dolmen for a plenary of the Rural Culture and Community Heritage Committee before Christmas.

“[They] all said ‘wow this place is so pretty, it’s so beautiful, it’s so clean’, so I don’t know where IBAL get the report.”

Mr O’Reilly also criticised the methodology used by IBAL in carrying out the survey.

“It does appear to me that they seem to pick random places and the most random places that they can find to mark us down on.

“I don’t understand the logic but yet again, if you were going to judge a place on its cleanliness, you would pick the same spots and go to them again, and again and again.

“In any kind of research methodology, you review the same thing on an ongoing basis to get a baseline to judge against it. You don’t come back and go ‘oh well that worked let’s pick something else’.”

He continued by saying that when he was previously working in Ballymun, the survey was carried out just three days after Christmas, which he thought was unfair.

He concluded by saying he wasn’t bothered by what the survey said about Carlow’s cleanliness.

“I don’t know guys. It’s a national headline twice a year. You get one in December, you get one in the summer.

“It doesn’t bother me, I don’t care. I’ll judge Carlow by how the councillors speak about it, how the citizens speak about it and what I see on a daily basis.”

In response to the comments, a spokesperson for IBAL told Carlow Live: “Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) is a business alliance sharing a belief that continued economic prosperity – notably in the areas of tourism, food and direct foreign investment – is contingent on a clean, litter-free environment.

“To this end, we have been conducting research into the cleanliness of towns and cities across Ireland without fear or favour for over 20 years. Any assertion that there is bias or an 'agenda' to our work is baseless.

“We have no hand or part in the site selection or site rating for any area, as we commission An Taisce to independently carry out the inspections and collate the data for us.”