Clare County Council is being accused of protecting illegal dumpers at every turn through its failure to enforce CCTV legislation.
As Shannon has become the latest corner of the county to be blighted by unauthorised waste disposal, calls are being reiterated for surveillance to be introduced at dumping blackspots.
It’s a phenomenon all too common in rural and urban parts of Clare alike but this week, it’s the people of Drumgeely in Shannon who have to contend with the unwelcome sight of illegal dumping.
In a sheltered wooded area of Shannon’s “original town centre” located just yards away from a popular walking trail, and a stone’s throw from St. John’s National School, a mound of mattresses, furniture, wooden pallets, shopping trolleys and other miscellaneous items has been on display in recent days.
It’s the latest in a string of instances of illegal dumping in Shannon and its hinterlands, but the problem isn’t unique to the industrial town.
So far this year, Clare County Council has received 579 complaints related to illegal dumping, 68 of which were made in the last month alone.
The prevalence of the issue has led to renewed calls for CCTV surveillance of blackspots, and although some have flagged GDPR concerns, Cratloe Fianna Fáil Councillor Pat O’Gorman says if you have nothing to fear, you have nothing to hide.
The Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act gives local authorities like Clare County Council the power to use surveillance technologies like CCTV to monitor illegal dumping.
There have long been calls for this legislation to be enforced in Clare, and the most recent meeting of the local authority has heard Clarecastle Fine Gael Councillor Paul Murphy and Ardnacrusha Fianna Fáil Rachel Hartigan ask that CCTV cameras be rolled out here for this purpose.
A reply from the Council says however that having conducted a preliminary survey of sites identified as blackspots, it was found that they didn’t meet the “proportionality threshold” to warrant the use of surveillance technologies.
Councillor Murphy says surveillance would be a great help to volunteers around the county who are trying to win the “battle” against illegal dumpers.
