Urban areas are urged to enter Tidy Towns

The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, is disappointed at the low level of participation by urban villages in the Tidy Towns competition and has urged city managers to encourage such areas to become involved.

Launching the 1999 National Tidy Towns Competition yesterday, the Minister said the Tidy Towns competition had "transformed the physical appearance of so many of our towns and villages over the last half of the twentieth century".

The competition attracts more than 700 town and village entrants each year but, according to the Minister, disappointingly few from the urban areas.

"Our cities contain many such villages which have retained their distinctive characteristics and personality," he said. He asked city managers and elected members in the State's five county boroughs to assist in ensuring that the competition's award for Best Urban Village is well promoted.

The Minister noted that the launch of this year's competition coincided with the launch of the first National Spring Clean campaign - a national anti-litter campaign which is being organised throughout the month of April by An Taisce.

Writing in the letters pages of The Irish Times recently, the Minister said that more than £20 million had been spent by local authorities last year in an attempt to eradicate the litter problem.

It was, he said, something he had continuously highlighted and he would continue to do so.

In a separate development yesterday, Dublin Corporation said it was instructing its litter-wardens to carry out a "get tough" approach to littering. A spokesman said the Corporation was impressed by the results of the "serious" wheel-clamping campaign and was anxious to bring the same measure of intolerance to litter.