Report, Irish Business Against Litter
I wish to respond to the Irish Business Against Litter Report.
I agree and disagree with the findings. Ultimately this is one person’s opinion and is based on a day trip to Cork. At the outset, this is a weak report and I say this because the report is in the public eye – there is no reference to what the Council is doing or acknowledgement of any economic context or any acknowledgement of work carried out over the last year since the last report. That’s disappointing.
Giving the report an evaluated read, the average grade from looking at the sites they have given us seems to be a grade b and so I am at odds to know how come we’re 52nd out 53 towns surveyed.
The statement “The Council will have to motivate the residents to play their part, not through the usual media channels, but through personal face to face contact.” is a difficult one to say the least.
An aim such as that brings its own problems in terms of staff resources –
There is a general consensus that overall the public relations used to raise awareness of the environment and litter amongst the general Cork citizen is weak. Many in this Chamber have pushed for more public awareness, more action to be taken on aspects such as dog fouling, that the Council needs to be seen more in its public parks, fine people more; last night in the cinema, the litter hotline ad sponsored by Cork City Council was on before the film but compared to other ads, it’s outdated and needs upgrading.
However, on the other extreme, we have an international environment and science centre in terms of the Lifetime Lab, which is influencing positively the hearts and minds of our young people. We have nearly 40 schools in Cork City and County that have the green flag which is nearly better than door to door contact. Reference was not made in the IBAL report to this.
The report does bring up a number of issues that have been raised time and again in this chamber and have been debated. Again no reference has been made to this in the report.
On Approach roads – yep I have stood up on three occasions now to speak about one such approach road, that of Silversprings dual carriage way– past the City boundaries from the Coat of Arms to the Dunkettle roundabout – there is huge overgrowth over the wire safety barrier… litter… rusted frames for signs…. not collected…. it looks terrible. It is those little things that visitors look at – first impressions of this city are so important. And I don’t buy the fact that it is the County Council’s problem – the tax payer doesn’t use different kinds of currency in the city and county to pay for services. Definitely we need more of a partnership approach.
As for the Lee Fields, as a green space, it is kept immaculate by the Council for a space that is over 75 years in Council ownership. I think the carpark that is located halfway up on the Straight Road, visually is a disaster – a dirty concrete wall surrounding a pot holed car park –then you have the concrete wasteland of the Victoria Cross carpark – these sites do no justice to the surrounding context of the beautiful Lee Fields
There is one item which the report mentions that has been discussed at length in the chamber the last couple of months – Dereliction and the surrounding grottiness that comes with that – certainly, this Council needs to look at how to strengthen our hand in terms of enforcing building owners to clean up their properties and even secure them safely as was brought up earlier on in the question section for example in terms of the Southern Road wall.
In terms of this Irish Business Against Litter Report, it needs critiquing and responding to in a proper manner; this City Council from what I can see from the hard work of the environment department is doing very good work against a backlash of funding cutbacks – I think more can be done to bring its work into the public eye alot more. There is a perception in some quarters that no work is being done to look after the city’s environment. I beg to differ with that argument and would like to encourage a more in your face litter and environment awareness campaign.
