Doolin Pier has been branded as one of just two “litter blackspots” in a first-of-its-kind survey of Ireland’s coasts and waterways.
The Irish Business Against Litter group has also found Lahinch to be “littered”, while Kilkee is said to be “moderately littered”.
In the first IBAL survey of it’s kind, 40 beaches, harbours and rivers and their immediate evirons across the country were examined.
Of them, only 4 were deemed to be “Clean to European Norms”, while 40% were found to be littered or heavily littered.
The report commissioned by An Taisce said that high levels of dumping at Doolin Pier were land-based, with the coach parking and car park areas the worst affected.
It said the overall presentation of this area was poor, with broken fencing and a general lack of care throughout, while there didn’t appear to be any bins or litter awareness notices.
In Lahinch, while large sections of the beach, pathway and steps were quite clean, it was the huge amounts of litter between the rocks, and marine litter trapped in the seaweed on the beach, that brought down the grade.
The overall impression of Kilkee was that it was somewhat littered – The land area was much cleaner than the water, with the lower shore line harbouring most of the litter, a lot of this trapped in the seaweed.
IBAL has been surveying our towns since 2002, where it says it took ten years to see an improvement in litter levels – it’s expecting it to take as long to achieve results at the country’s coastal areas and waterways.
