Two families who claim their lives are being made miserable by noise from a bottle bank close to their homes in Kingston, on the outskirts of Galway city, brought an action against the corporation at Galway District Court yesterday. Mr Declan and Ms Eileen Moloney and their neighbours, Mr Liam and Ms Philomena Mason, all of Dun a Ri, Kingston, complained under Section 108 (3) of the Environmental Protection Agency Act.
They say the corporation is making, causing or responsible for noise by the reception of and emptying of bottles from a bottle bank at unsocial and unreasonable hours at Joyce's Supermarket, Kingston Road.
Mr Moloney gave evidence that he and the other complainants were "going insane" because of the constant noise of bottles breaking as people used the bottle bank day and night in the supermarket car-park, 35 metres from his home.
Mr Moloney said he had received no reply to his written complaint to the corporation last May about the noise, and the local authority had only moved the bottle bank to a yard within the car-park last Friday because of the impending court case.
His neighbour, Mr Mason, said the lorry which came to collect the bottles twice a week arrived one day at 11.40 p.m. "Can you imagine 600 bottles falling from a height of 20 feet?" he asked.
A corporation senior executive engineer with responsibility for the siting of bottle banks, Mr Michael Joyce, told the court this was a classic case of "not in my backyard".
Everything was being done to facilitate the complainants, he said.
He said supermarket car-parks were found to be the most suitable sites for bottle banks as more people used them.
He admitted the bottles had been collected late at night on one occasion, but added that the collector had been reprimanded and had given an undertaking it would not happen again.
Judge John Garavan said he had great sympathy for the complainants. He asked them to meet Mr Joyce and try to reach a compromise. He adjourned the matter until February 26th.