Sir, While echoing your call (Editorial, July 4th) for our capital to be kept clean on a par with Paris and Barcelona, I would contest your assertion that our litter surveys give Dublin City Council grounds for complacency. Dublin was indeed deemed "clean to European norms" back in 2013, but last year two surveys found it had slipped to "moderately littered", with the north inner city "seriously littered".
Clearly, Dublin is not clean. Furthermore, with over half our visitors using the city as a gateway, we cannot claim our country is clean if our capital city is not.
We look forward to improved results in the next Irish Business Against Litter survey later this summer.
Joyce’s phrase “dear dirty Dublin”, as you point out, was an expression of his fondness for the city, yet he was clearly taken by the cleanliness of Zurich on moving there, with the Bahnhofstrasse so clean that one could drink minestrone soup off the pavement. O’Connell Street take note!
– Yours, etc,
CONOR HORGAN
Irish Business Against Litter
Guinness Enterprise Centre,
Taylors Lane,
Dublin 8.