Staggering cost of dealing with illegal dumping in Limerick city revealed

LIMERICK Council spent almost €200,000 cleaning up illegally dumped rubbish in the city during 2024.

The figures, from senior engineer Aidan Finn were presented to Social Democrats councillor Elisa O’Donovan at this month’s metropolitan district meeting.

The data she was given showed the clean-up of illegally dumped litter was split between sections of the council.

Some €96,800 was spent by the cleansing department, and €69,666 by the regeneration directorate.

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On top of this, Mr Finn stated, a total of €30,000 was spent on bulky waste collections and the installation of closed-circuit television in an effort to combat illegal dumping.

In total, it means €196,466 was spent cleaning up litter.

This does not include the hire of equipment or the cost of employing staff to carry out the work. And the cost of anti-dumping initiatives amounted to an extra €43,348.61.

Cllr O’Donovan also asked for a rundown of some of the blackspots for illegal dumping in the city.

Mr Finn wrote in reply: “Some of the most frequent locations for illegal dumping in 2024 were St Mary’s Park, Ballinacurra Weston, Lenihan Avenue, city centre laneways, Coonagh / Clondrinagh, Johnsgate and Kilmallock Road.”

Elsewhere, at this month’s meeting, it emerged that council had collected €648,268.28 from developers who own derelict sites across the metropolitan district.

Head of property, Jayne Leahy, provided the figure in response to a question from Cllr O’Donovan.

A derelict site levy is imposed on the owners of urban land which has been declared out-of-use by the local authority.

It amounts to 7% of the value of the land which has been left undeveloped.

Interest can be accrued if development levies are left unpaid. And the local authority can take landowners to court in a bid to recover costs from them.

By the same token, the option is open to developers to challenge the listing of their land as a derelict site.

They can appeal to An Bord Pleanala to make a ruling.

And there is also the option of court proceedings.