Dumping on approach roads in the Thurles District continues to be a point of frustration for local councillors and community groups.
The point was first raised by Councillor Sean Ryan, and it led to a widespread discussion at this month’s meeting of the Thurles MD.
All councillors chimed in to have their say and suggest ways to stamp out dumping for their areas.
CCTV, drones, mechanical methods, awareness campaigns, liaising with fast food outlets, and Gardaí were some of the suggestions made to tackle dumping that were heard
Cllr. Ryan says this is extremely unfair on local tidy towns and community groups.
“There’s nothing as bad as bad people cleaning their villages and killing themselves and then seeing the roads into the villages being less just because somebody is dumping onto them and leaving them ruined and ruining the good work of so many Tidy Town’s groups and organisations. We give grants to Tidy Town’s organisations, who do so much good work, and the council gets great bang for their buck from the different funding that they give to Tidy Town’s organisations and to see all their hard work and to see the hard work of our environment and enforcement officers all ruined.”
Five people have received fines for dumping in the Thurles district so far this year, according to the Fianna Fail councillor.
Cllr. Ryan said these offenders have no place in society.
“The people who dump in the countryside and on approach roads into towns will be caught and will be prosecuted for it. It’s got no place in our society, there are plenty of bins provided in our towns; there’s smart bins provided in some of our villages as well, and towns and we’re hoping to get some more of those later in the year. It’s only a handful of people dumping stuff, it just can’t be tolerated and I think we need a zero tolerance on it.”
