Rebecca Moynihan (Labour) | Oireachtas source

I pay tribute to Senator Wall for bringing forward his Bill. Illegal dumping may not be the most glamorous side of politics but, as the Senator said, it is the issue on which we get most representations. Every time we knock on a door, the first issue people raise is the need to tackle dog poo and illegal dumping.

People talk about GDPR gone mad. The most illustrative case of that was the move by the Data Protection Commission to reprimand local authorities for the use of CCTV in tackling illegal dumping. Illegal dumping is the scourge of the country and we need to do all we can with the tools at our disposal to tackle the issue. That is why the Bill is so important. It is essential that local authorities are able to use CCTV to tackle illegal dumping, fine and prosecute people and make it unacceptable for them to dump illegally in their communities. The area in which I live has suffered badly as it has many hotspots for illegal dumping. For example, if the city council clears an area without CCTV at 2 p.m., it will be covered in rubbish again later that night. There are signs up but people ignore them. What is the problem and who is doing this? Are people coming from outside the area to dump illegally? No, it is often neighbours and people who dump rubbish know they can do so. The public domain officers who work in local authorities have told us how clever some people are when dumping their rubbish. To give an example, they know of an individual who illegally dumped rubbish on a particular road but was so good at covering his or her tracks that he or she removed labels from prescription bottles and removed the addresses from bills to prevent tracing.

How do we tackle illegal dumping and are local authorities doing enough? The Irish Timeshas reported that between 2012 and 2017, the majority of the 6,032 court cases taken by local authorities were unsuccessful. In just 30% of cases, the court found in favour of the local authority and the €700,000 in fines imposed by judges equated to €386 per fine.This refers only to those cases that ended up in court. Prosecuting such cases, however, cost local authorities an average of €600. The Journal has reported that, in respect of 6,000 bags of rubbish dumped illegally in Senator Fitzpatrick's area in the north inner city, another big hotspot, only 246 fines were issued and there were only 93 prosecutions for the non-payment of fines. Local authority representatives who go to court tell us that judges will laugh them out of court in such cases. It is not seen as a serious issue. We need ways to tackle it in the courts and to have people pay fines but we also need to make it so shameful to dump illegally that people will not want to do it within their own communities, because it is their own communities and their own neighbours they are affecting. When one walks into an area and sees rubbish strewn all over the place, one feels that people do not care about it, but the majority of people do care and work hard to keep their communities safe and clean. A couple of people, however, consistently dump illegally.

Like Senator Wall, I pay tribute to the litter wardens within local authorities who tackle the issue of illegal dumping. The litter wardens in my area know who is responsible for such dumping down to the very roads. They also know the times at which they do it. It is very hard, however, to catch people in the act and to be able to issue a fine unless one is sitting at a window watching people. The public domain officers and litter wardens work very hard but they need better tools at their disposal if they are to tackle the issue of illegal dumping. That is why Senator Wall's Bill is so important and that is why I ask that the Government expedite it. It seems like a very simple Bill but it will do a great amount in our local authorities.

Finally, I will address the underlying reason so many people dump illegally. It is because our local authorities do not have control over our municipal waste services. Within Dublin city, on certain days, as many as six trucks will go up and down the road collecting waste. We need a centralised municipal waste authority to take waste management back into the control of local authorities. Unless we address this underlying cause, people will continue to dump illegally. This Bill is very welcome and I hope the Government progresses it. I also ask that the Government look at facilitating those local authorities, such as Dublin City Council, that want to get back to running their own municipal waste authorities.