The Department of the Environment and Local Government has lent its backing to a pilot business-led anti-litter campaign, which has been credited with improving the cleanliness of a number of towns throughout the State.
Presenting awards yesterday in the first Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) annual anti-litter league, the Minister of State at the Department of the Environment, Mr Pat Gallagher, pledged €50,000 in State funding to the scheme next year to allow it to expand into more towns and cities.
Carlow was found to be the cleanest town in Ireland in 2002, according to surveys carried out by An Taisce for IBAL in 29 counties.
Fermoy, Co Cork, finished second and Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, third.
Three other towns - Cavan, Armagh and Wexford - were awarded litter-free status in the survey, the last of four to take place this year.
The news was dampened by the fact that four other towns had slipped out of the litter-free category over the course of the year: Kilkenny; Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim; Clonmel, Co Tipperary and Roscommon.
Despite its fall from grace, however, Roscommon was named the most improved town of the year, closely followed by Tuam, Co Galway, and Clonmel, Co Tipperary.
Dr Tom Cavanagh of IBAL said the latest survey highlighted a general improvement over the past 12 months. Overall litter levels had been reduced by 15 per cent.
Moreover, at the start of the year only one-third of towns was categorised as "litter-free" or "moderately littered" while two-thirds received the same category at the end of the year.
Since the last survey, published last August, Sligo has risen from the "very heavily littered" category to "heavily littered", leaving just Drogheda, Co Louth; Longford and the Liberties/Coombe area of Dublin in the bottom zone.
Dr Cavanagh said the results bore out IBAL's belief that a name-and-shame policy, targeted at local authorities, was an effective means of energising them into action on litter.
On the downside, however, he said on-the-spot litter fines had dropped by 8 per cent on last year to just five fines a week for each local authority. "With such a paltry level of enforcement, litter-free streets will remain outside the grasp of most authorities."
A spokesman for IBAL, an alliance established in 1996 of more than 30 member companies, said it planned to increase the number of areas covered by the survey next year, focusing in particular on more urban and city areas.
At present, the Liberties/ Coombe is the only city-centre area surveyed, and partly as a result of this, it has continually come in last in the league.
