Writes Ciaran Dineen
At the first recent meeting of the new Carrigaline LEA Municipal District (MD) meeting, Councillors called for the urgent need to implement CCTV surveillance at local recycling centres. The reaction comes following a consistent bout of dumping incidents, occurring primarily in Carrigaline, Passage and Shanbally.
Questions surrounding dumping and fines was first discussed at the Southern Committee meeting, prior to the more localized MD, following a detailed report highlighting the number of litter fines throughout the county. The study found that complaints made alleging some form of illegal waste disposal was by far highest in the old Ballincollig-Carrigaline district.
Although a finer breakdown of the areas where complaints were made cannot be given, this would follow trends in Carrigaline of late, following a number of dumping incidents. During the Southern meeting, Councillor Liam O’Connor (FG) asked County officials if there were any plans to amalgamate the recycling facilities based in the Owenabue and SuperValu carparks, and create one centre that could be more easily monitored.
Recent Dumping at Carrigaline Recycling Centre
Councillor Marcia D’Alton (Ind) also pointed out to the chamber that there were blindspots at the recycling facilities in Shanbally and that CCTV would be necessary if they were to be able prevent further misuse from happening, to which Councillor Seámus McGrath (FF) concurred. Cllr D’Alton went on to highlight similar issues in Passage West and asked officials to what extent will CCTV be rolled out.
The response given to Cllr D’Alton was that as of yet there was not a list of areas that will be receiving surveillance equipment, that there is no calendar or timeline so far and that at the end of the day it will be up to the head of Waste Enforcement to decide the location of CCTV, but said that they would refer the blindspot in Shanbally directly to the head of Waste Management.
Cllr McGrath referred to the number of litter complaints recorded so far from January until March 31st, which totaled 133, and suggested that in fact this was an unrealistic figure. The reason he gave for this was that he felt that members of the public would not issue a complaint because they would not have confidence in the Council to respond to their claims.
Cllr O’Connor, having been told at the Southern Meeting that there were no plans to amalgamate the two recycling centres in Carrigaline, also brought up the issue at the MD. In response Senior Executive Officer, Jim Molloy said that there weren’t any existing plans to match the description of Cllr O’Connor, however he did say that there would be the chance to re-visit that idea in the future.
Madeline Healy, Senior Executive Engineer said that there were plans to increase the size of the Owenabue carpark, where a full re-design would take place. While she did gravitate towards the idea that a bigger recycling centre could possibly be located in the carpark, she said that the area where Cllr O’Connor was looking at was, to the best of her knowledge, in private ownership. She went on to say that as a result at the very least it would be a lengthy process.
Following up was Cllr McGrath, who fully backed Cllr O’Connor’s call for increased CCTV, saying that in the short-term it was urgently needed as the misuse of the facilities was “disgraceful”. All councilors were in agreement that improvements needed to be made to prevent future dumping in the future and that it had become a serious problem. Officials agreed and said that they would pursue the issue.
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