Buncrana Tidy Towns calls for boycott of rates until the roadsweeper is reinstated

Buncrana Tidy Towns is calling on businesses to withhold commercial rates until a roadsweeper is reinstated in Buncrana. 

The Buncrana Tidy Towns Initiative, downed tools from today, and halted its work in protest at the reduction in street sweeps on the town’s Main Street.

Since the 23rd of June, the Buncrana Tidy Town branch has taken over the tidying of the town, but the chairman of Buncrana Tidy Towns, Gerard Porter, said they had no choice but to protest as the situation is “not sustainable, as Buncrana Tidy Towns volunteers have kept Buncrana's main street clean this summer.” 

“We took over cleaning the main street because the council wasn't doing a good enough job; they weren't lifting broken glass, they weren't lifting cigarette butts, and that wasn't up to our level.”

“Entries to SuperValu TidyTowns awards get criticised by the judges for overall general tidiness, and they would pick up on the broken glass, cigarette butts, things like that, which they rightly should.”

“It's not only an issue for overall tidiness, but also health and safety too, whenever you've got broken glass and members of the public using the main street.”

Without a specialised road sweeper, the disheartened volunteers' workload has tripled. Since the end of June, the Buncrana volunteers have been working on a rotation system. The chairman and his 12-year-old son, along with 20 other members, have been tidying the town seven nights a week “for the rate payers of this town, who are relying on tourists and visitors to come into a clean town, and we have done it for the people of the town.”

Mr Porter is calling on Buncrana’s councillors to speak up for them and business people to withhold their rates because “they've the power, they've the money, they give the money to the council. If they stop giving the council that money, the council will soon sit up and listen. They're not listening to us, we're just tidy towns, that's all we are to them.”

A meeting is being arranged for all businesses in the town to come together for the benefit of all in Buncrana in the Inishowen Gateway Hotel on Thursday, 18th September at 8pm. 

Ahead of the meeting, Mr Porter said as “chairman of Buncrana Tidy Towns, I'm calling on the business community in the town that we love, we do everything for to get a group together and get at the council about withholding rates, we're going to withhold our rates until we get a proper service to Buncrana.”

“It's an absolute disgrace, second biggest town in Donegal and we don't even have a road sweeper service, I have to phone the council to ask them can they get a road sweeper for a day, that there's that much broken glass on the main street, I shouldn't have to do that, I'm a volunteer, I have another job.”

“I would call on businesses to withhold rates, and that's the only solution, if you don't give the council their money then they'll soon wake up and somebody in the higher echelons of Donegal County Council will say listen here boys, what's going on down there, these businesses aren’t paying their rates and we have no money coming in.”

“Businesses already have to pay for their refuse, they already have to pay for their water, and they're paying for their  insurance, lighting, and all that.”

To help solve the issue, Donegal County Council has ordered a 'Billy Goat' street sweeper, which will arrive in a few weeks, but Gerard Porter isn’t confident that it will help solve the problem for Buncrana, which has won a gold medal for several years in a row at the TidyTowns awards. 

“The Council have employed a local company now, they just empty the bins and they lift whatever big rubbish they see, they wouldn't be lifting the broken glass or the cigarette butts.”

“The council then came up with a suggestion of a billy goat, so what it more or less does is someone walks behind it, and it sucks up whatever, but I can't, personally see it working for a town the size of Buncrana, because the road sweeper would have done from the Inishowen Gateway Hotel up around the town, Shore Road, all around there out as far as Supervalu.”

“A proper road sweeper would do that, so I can't see how this is cost-effective. The only solution is a road sweeper, and I met with the council a few times over this issue and I suggested to them that maybe they should purchase a small road sweeper, you would see in and around Grafton Street in Dublin and the council could operate that themselves, with the budget that they had for the road sweeper, would be paid off in two years.”

“It's a no-brainer, it's not rocket science, but they're not willing to buy a road sweeper, they want to privatise everything, and that's the problem.”

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The tidy towns will now not be operating on Main Street or around St Mary's Road and down by the Lunchbox until the road sweeper is back. 

“I've instructed all our members to stay off (the main street. The FÁS scheme workers have been told not to clean the main street, so give it a week or two and you'll soon see the litter build up.”