A local authority yesterday said it was determined to enforce the Europe-wide principle of the "polluter pays" and is to present a multinational firm a bill for €12,000 for clean-up operations after tens of thousands of baby-wipes washed up on its blue-flag beaches.
The unused Pampers wipes, made by Procter & Gamble, began to appear earlier this year in Kerry and along coastlines in Cork and Waterford as well as on tourist beaches in Devon and Cornwall in the south-west of England. They are still washing up, and last weekend thousands were found on the blue-flag beach at Inch in Co Kerry.
Last night a spokesman for Proctor & Gamble in the UK indicated the company would be paying the county council the full €12,000. "We will pay it. There is no issue there," he said.
The company had already paid out a substantial amount to other local authorities in the UK, he said.
Mr Micheál Ó Coileáin, environmental awareness officer with Kerry County Council, said the wipes were not toxic, but were presenting a bad image of many of Kerry's 13 blue-flag beaches, which were so important to the tourist industry.
"The impression being given is that every baby's bottom being wiped in Kerry is being dumped at sea," he said.
Mr Ó Coileáin, along with local authorities in the south-east of England, have ascertained that nine containers of the wipes fell from a container off the French coast. He was originally told by the company that a much smaller number had been lost in French waters, he said.
The Procter & Gamble spokesman said that confusion over the number of containers had arisen because there were two incidents during the January storms which saw a ship lose cargo and almost sink.
The clean-up operation so far has cost Kerry County Council some €12,000 and Mr Ó Coileáin yesterday wrote to the company asking for that amount.
Surfers Against Sewage, a Cornwall-based association formed to fight pollution on beaches and marine litter, has joined Mr Ó Coileáin in seeking the enforcement of the "polluter pays" principle.