This article is from page 10 of the 2012-09-04 edition of The Clare People. OCR mistakes are to be expected so download the original SWF or the rendered page 10 JPG
ENNIS has held onto its ‘Clean to European Norms’ status in the latest litter survey by Irish Business Against Litter, despite dropping 15 places to 31st, among 42 towns surveyed.
There were just five top ranking sites out of a total of ten surveyed in Ennis – combined with two seriously littered sites. This puts Ennis in the bottom third of the towns / cities surveyed. Ennis Rail and Bus Station was the only area in the survey deemed to be “littered”.
The railway station scored a grade C in An Taisce’s report. It states, “The station itself is well presented e.g. good paving / road surface / planter boxes etc, but unfortunately there were a couple of separate incidents of heavy levels of litter on the ground beside the telephone box and on the steps. It was mostly ‘fresh’ litter, indicating it was not a long-term problem.”
A spokesperson for An Taisce descrbied the results for Ennis as “disappointing”.
She continued, “The two seriously littered sites, Ennis Community College and Ennis Railway Station, put Ennis at the bottom of the ‘Clean to European Norms’ category. The litter situation at Ennis Community College was a more long-term issue than that at the railway station. The R469 Quin approach road had been a very poor site during previous IBAL Anti-Litter surveys. Things were much improved this time around and hopefully this upward trajectory can continue.”
The findings come a week ahead of the results of the annual Tidy Towns competition. The study, despite showing continuing improvement in the cleanliness of our cities and towns, revealed the environs of Dublin Air- port to be a litter blackspot.
76 per cent of the 42 towns and cities surveyed were deemed to be clean, a record percentage. Cavan was judged Ireland’s cleanest town, one of 18 to be rated ‘cleaner than European norms’. An Taisce inspectors praised it as “a town that clearly takes great pride in its environment”.