Posted online: Nov 14th, 2008

By Clare Weir

People in Letterkenny are being urged to shop anyone they catch illegally dumping rubbish – and to take a picture for evidence.
Councillor Ciaran Brogan is warning the public that anyone caught and proven to be illegally dumping rubbish will be prosecuted – and has urged the community to stand up to those destroying the town’s image
The Fianna Fail man says that a major clampdown is on the way with council plans to introduce strict new measures to ensure that the problem is eradicated.
Councillor Brogan says anyone who witnesses illegal dumping should get in touch with their local authority right away.
He said that the town’s litter wardens have been putting in extra hours in a bid to track down and clean up after irresponsible dumpers.
“This is a big problem in Letterkenny.” he said.
“People are just dumping their household rubbish everywhere, it’s every sort of thing you can think of from people’s homes.
“However steps are being taken and we will not let illegal dumpers get away with it. Our litter wardens have been working overtime and doing extra hours, taking pictures and speaking to people and we have had a number of successes in tracking these dumpers down.
“Over €1m a year is spent on the upkeep of the town and we have been rewarded with things like the Tidy Towns awards.
“We can’t allow a small number of irresponsible people to spoil all that good work.
“I just can’t understand why it is happening apart from laziness – Letterkenny is more than well served by civic amenity sites and refuse collection.”
And he said that the local community also has a role to play in bringing the litter louts to book.
“Everyone can help by keeping an extra eye out for people illegally dumping. They can take the details of any cars they see acting suspiciously in their areas and give that information to our litter wardens.
“With the amount of mobile phones with cameras, they can even take a picture and we could use that against the perpetrators.
“I think that local people will no longer tolerate people coming in and ruining their area and by letting us know what is going on, we will be able to stop it.”
Councillor Brogan added: “We want to sent the message to the dumpers that they are only one step ahead of us and we will track them down eventually, hopefully with the help of the public and our hard-working litter wardens.”