Inspector Martin Byrne told a meeting of the Castlebar Joint Policing Committee this week that he would endeavour to get the gardaí in the town to carry out more enforcement on litter offences. The members of the committee were given a presentation at the meeting by Sharon Cameron, the environmental awareness officer from Mayo County Council, on the issue of litter and enforcement in the county.
A number of the members of the committee told the meeting that they had serious concerns about the amount of littering that occurred at bottle banks in the town over the Christmas period. “The issue was particularly bad at Christmas,” Cllr Therese Ruane told the meeting. “I was at the bottle bank on January 3 at the county council offices. The banks were full of bottles and there was broken glass and litter all over the ground.”
Cllr Frank Durcan asked why the council did not put refuse collection points beside the bottle bins. In response to Cllr Ruane’s complaint, Ms Cameron told the meeting that the council had mobile CCTV operating in the area over Christmas and the environmental section was looking into it. In relation to Cllr Durcan’s question about installing refuse collection points beside the bottle bank, Ms Cameron told the meeting: “We have found in the past that by putting such a service there, it actually ends up with more people dumping there than when there is none there.”
Cllr Eugene McCormack told the meeting that the previous weekend there was a clean up of the Church of Ireland graveyard carried out in the town and there were 73 bags of rubbish collected from there, Cllr Blackie Gavin called for the council to keep moving its mobile CCTV cameras around the town to different locations like this and the old Roman Catholic graveyard in the town to catch the people in the act of dumping. Senator Paddy Burke asked how many prosecutions the gardaí had brought in relation to littering at night time when the council’s own litter wardens and environmental officers were off duty. Inspector Byrne told the meeting that he did not have the figures to hand, but he would endeavour to get the members to carry out more enforcement in this area in the future.
