Council criticises IBAL's report on northside of city

A recent report from Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) and An Taisce has been criticised by a number of Cork city councillors for its negative appraisal of the northside of the city.

In a motion put to the latest meeting of Cork City Council on Monday 8 June, Sinn Féin Cllr Kenneth Collins said IBAL should remove the northside from its report.

He also suggested the organisation should be invited to come before Cork City Council to outline its methodology when scoring areas.

Cork’s northside was placed 31st out of 40 areas surveyed in the latest report, released on 7 June. Cork City Centre was placed 17th.

Cllr Collins said it was unfair for IBAL and An Taisce to criticise Cork City Council for littering on the northside of the city when the council is “cash-strapped”, and there was no funding being offered by national Government to address the issues being highlighted.

Fine Gael Cllr Joe Kavanagh also supported the motion, and said Cork’s northside should be “an awful lot higher” than 31st out of 40.

“When people come to visit the city they come to a beautiful, clean Cork,” which is a result of the work done by city council cleansing staff, he said.

He also highlighted the work done by a number of Tidy Towns groups across the city.

Cllr Kavanagh is a member of the Tidy Towns group in Mayfield.

“We go out on a Saturday morning litter-picking, painting, planting flowers, and we’re supported by the cleansing team in the council,” he said.

He said the methodology by which IBAL judges the cleanliness of areas should be explained to the local authority, which he said was due to the respect that volunteers and cleansing staff in the city deserved.

Other councillors disagreed, and said the IBAL report was a necessary wake-up call for the council on what areas of the city need more attention.

Green Party Cllr Oliver Moran said previous reports had highlighted that the council was not doing enough to keep the northside clean.

“The sites which were being identified as the most littered were our own sites, the ones in our ownership.

“If you can’t measure something, you can’t change it, and what the IBAL survey does year-on-year is tell us what the measurement is,” he said.

Northside report

IBAL’s report on the northside said it had achieved one of its best results yet. It highlighted Parklands Drive, Planet Entertainment Centre, Patrick’s Hill, Pope’s Quay, and Shandon Street as the top ranking sites.

However, it said areas such as the Mayfield and Hollymount Industrial Estates “both presented poorly, not just littered but general debris / discarded materials were present”.

Two wastegrounds, beside the Dinnes Stores on Ballyvolane Road, and at the corner of Fairfield Meadows were marked poorly.

CI Body Text: The Dunnes Stores wasteground was found to have “dangerous levels of broken glass by the recycling units”, while the one at Fairfield Meadows had a “monumental” level of household dumping.

It also highlighted two specific properties as being of serious concern, 55 Kilmore Road Lower, and 58 Killala Gardens.

It said both sites had been subject to heavy dumping and that the site on Kilmore Road Lower had suffered “long-term neglect and abuse”.

Overall, ten areas surveyed received an A Grade, seven received a B+ or B, five received a C+ or C, and three received a D Grade.

This article was produced with the support of the Local Democracy Reporting Scheme funded by Coimisiún na Meán.