Cameras aimed at catching illegal dumpers are due to start operating in Dublin’s north inner city by the end of this month, Dublin City Council has said.
The north inner city was again identified as the dirtiest urban area in the State by the Irish Business Against Litter (Ibal) report published earlier this month, with rubbish scattered from ripped plastic bags a particular problem.
The removal of illegally dumped waste from the city’s streets, and suburbs, including rubbish discarded at bottle and textile banks, as well as parks and green areas, costs the council some €1 million annually.
The council last September announced plans to use CCTV to identify illegal dumpers for the first time in almost a decade. Three streets in the north inner city, the capital’s worst litter black spot, were chosen as pilot locations: Belvedere Place, Sherrard Street Lower and Summer Street North.
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Cameras are due to be switched on this month the council said, but will only be used to catch litter louts who dump waste from a car.
[ CCTV to be used to catch Dublin’s dumpers - but only if they have carsOpens in new window ]
“We will not be able to use any footage of people who are walking about the street with a bag in their hand who are dumping,” Bernie Lillis, the council official heading up the initiative, told councillors last September. “We are only able to use the registration numbers of vehicles.”
In 2014 the council began installing CCTV at litter black spots, mostly in the north inner city, as part of a crackdown on illegal dumping. It subsequently erected a poster featuring 12 dumpers, with their faces blurred.
However, the move aroused the attention of the Data Protection Commission, which questioned the proportionality of the scheme and the rights to privacy of the dumpers.
The commission in 2018 undertook an investigation of CCTV use by local authorities nationally and concluded existing litter pollution and waste management law did not provide for using CCTV to identify dumpers.
New legislation, the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022, amended the Litter Pollution Acts to allow CCTV use, and the council has been working for the past two years with various State agencies to develop a new scheme.
Satisfying the data-protection regulations had been a “monumental task”, Ms Lillis had said. “We were overwhelmed when we saw the amount of documentation required.”
The council said the data-protection impact assessments have now been approved for the three chosen streets “and we would envisage cameras being operational in January 2025″.
[ Illegal dumping has cost Dublin City Council €5.2m over five yearsOpens in new window ]
The next phase of camera enforcement will involve the use of CCTV at bottle and textile banks where there is a high level of illegal dumping, before considering some suburban areas for the scheme.
The Ibal report complied by An Taisce found a prevalence of ripped open waste bags in the north inner city. Sherrard Street Upper was a particular black spot with “bags of domestic rubbish, the contents of which have been ripped open and scattered about”.
A ban on the use of plastic bin bags, which came into force on 90 streets in the south inner city on January 1st, will be extended to the north inner city by the summer, focusing initially on the area around Henry Street and Abbey Street.
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