Mayo County Council has passed a motion submitted by independent councillor Mark Duffy calling for a seven-day bin collection service - at their June meeting this week.
Cllr Duffy's motion read: “Calling on Mayo County Council to create a countywide approach to ensure public bins are collected seven days a week across the county to address overflows in many towns and villages at weekends." In a written response to Cllr Duffy's motion, Martin Keating, head of Environment, Climate Change and Agriculture for Mayo County Council, said that his department allocates funding to the different municipal districts for their programme of works for the year and it was up to each district as to how to allocate the resources.
Speaking on the motion, Cllr Duffy said: "The picture at the moment - at least it is in Ballina - is that there is huge work done by community groups tackling the litter problem and it is not being helped by instances where the council are not administrating seven-day-a-week bin collections. It is causing overflow of bins which is littering towns and villages across the county."
He went on to say: "I do think regardless of where responsibility lies, a countywide approach needs to ensure bins are collected when they are overflowing and not left from Friday until the Monday."
Cllr Duffy got support for his motion from a number of councillors, with Cllr Christy Hyland pointing out that the government wants the public to have an outdoor Summer, but services need to be put in place for that. Fine Gael councillor Donna Sheridan also spoke in favour of the motion and said that she was pleased to see that in Castlebar, two new high-tech bins had been put in place in the town at Lough Lannagh and The Mall, made by a local company, that sends a message to the council to say when they are full.
