It is nearly 20 years since retired Cork businessman Dr Tom Cavanagh set up the Irish Business Against Litter (Ibal) campaign in 1996 to "rid our country of this scourge" of rubbish being casually discarded on the streets of Ireland's cities and towns. The initiative was born from his firm belief that "a clean environment is fundamental to our continued economic prosperity". Since then, it would be fair to say that Ibal has succeeded in generating greater public awareness of the problem as well as raising the bar among local authorities in their efforts to tackle it on the ground, although the results of its annual survey – carried out by An Taisce – are usually quite mixed.
Killarney, Co Kerry, was named as the cleanest town surveyed this year, "a fitting result for a town which is at the heart of our tourism product", as Ibal said, adding that it earned the No 1 place by "continuous attention to detail". Dungarvan, Co Waterford, came second, followed by Tralee, Co Kerry. But Dublin city centre, which welcomes more visitors than anywhere else in Ireland, was found to have slipped down the rankings from "clean" to "moderately littered", at least partly because of "builders' litter" associated with construction work on the Luas Cross City project.
More positively, research commissioned by Ibal earlier this year showed that three times as many people feel that Ireland has become cleaner (61 per cent) as opposed to dirtier (20 per cent) over the past decade. But more than four in 10 respondents said litter in their locality is a still a concern, with 12 per cent ranking it ahead of crime, anti-social behaviour, road safety and drug abuse as an issue. Those living in rural villages or towns were more positive about the change in litter levels than those living in cities, with 64 per cent of those outside Dublin saying they believe things have improved, compared to 55 per cent in the capital.
Clearly, despite the best efforts of Ibal and An Taisce, there are still problems to be overcome before we can truly say that Irish cities and towns are clean by European standards.