A man who claimed that he only disposed of one bag of litter in a large litter haul which was discovered illegally dumped near Balla was convicted and fined at Castlebar District Court this week.
Maxlane Moreire, 12 Orlagh Grove, Newport Road, Castlebar was summonsed by Mayo County Council after rubbish which he disposed of was discovered at an entrance to a side road from Manulla to Balla on April 18 of this year.
Mr Des Hannock, Environment Enforcement Officer, inspected the location after a complaint was made on March 2 in relation to the large volume of household material disposed of at the entrance to some bog plots. While sifting through the evidence an envelope was found which contained the defendant’s details.
Altogether there were 12 tonnes of rubbish in the location, which cost almost €2,500 to clean up.
Defending solicitor Fiona McAllister said that Moreire saw other rubbish that was dumped there and left one bag of rubbish at the site.
Judge Mary Devins said that the best penalty which she would like to impose would be to get the litter offenders to clean up, before she convicted and fined the defendant €500 and ordered that €500 be paid as a contribution to local authority costs and expenses.
