“Perhaps this is the wake-up call we needed” says Mayor
The shock of last week’s news that Drogheda has been officially classified as the third dirtiest town in Ireland doesn’t make for pleasant reading but it could well be the stimulus that we need to change things.
Certainly that was the experience of Portlaoise who came bottom of the charts ten years ago but are number one this year.
For too long Drogheda has been slipping down the Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) rankings and now the time has come to start fighting back.
It’s not all bad news though, the IBAL report says the town centre streets generally presented well with “plenty of colourful planting and good streetscape”.
Sadly though, this is more than offset by three very heavily littered sites, making Drogheda “the most littered of any town surveyed.
“… the Bring Centres at Palace Street car Park and on Trinity Street were in a very poor state, the latter showing no improvement on 2020” the report points out.
“The third poor site was a Laneway at the rear of Moneymore– it wasn’t just littered but sacks of rubbish had been discarded, the contents of which were strewn about.”
Topping the IBAL charts this year is Portaloise but ten years ago the Midland town was in a similar position to Drogheda, worse in fact, they came Paddy last in the rankings.
Drogheda Life asked Gerry Browne, the Chair of the Portlaoise Tidy Towns group, how they had turned things around so convincingly.
He told us that a group of concerned citizens in Portlaoise, shocked at the performance of their home town, got together and formed what they called a Town Team, which is made up of representatives from various organisations such as business organisations, Tidy Towns Committees, Residents Associations, Council officials and local Councillors.
Each group committed to looking after one area of the town and the Council agreed to support them.
Ten years later the Town Team Committee still meets every six to eight weeks to plan new activities and also so that each group knows what the others are doing and avoid duplication.
“There were regular litter picks in each area and gradually Portlaoise was turned around” Mr. Browne said.
“It takes a special type of person to clean up someone else’s rubbish but we got a great crew together and we received very good support from the Council and everyone adopted a can-do and hands-on approach.”
Drogheda’s bad report was raised at Last week’s Louth County Council meeting and officials said they will be coming up with some proposals at next Monday’s Drogheda Borough meeting.
The Mayor of Drogheda, Councillor James Byrne told Drogheda Life that he had a lot of questions for Monday’s meeting but he thought that a group such as the Portlaoise Town Team could also work in Drogheda but it would need a buy-in from organisations such as the LoveDrogheda BIDs Company, Tidy Towns Committee, Chamber of commerce, residents associations and others.
“We need some joined up thinking” the Mayor said. “I don’t think there are any overnight solutions but we must strive hard and hopefully we will get there in time.”
“What’s the point in promoting Drogheda as a destination town if it is so dirty?” he asked. “Nobody will return unless things change.”
“Perhaps this is the wake-up call we needed and we need to act on it and try to improve the appearance of the town year on year.”
Councillor Byrne said he would be talking to the Chair of the Portlaoise Tidy Towns group, over the next few days to see if Drogheda learn from their experiences.
See our previous article on this topic:
Drogheda comes 38th out of 40 towns and cities in litter league
