Northside councillors call for improved waste services

Northside councillors have called for Dublin City Council’s planned improvements to city centre cleaning to be expanded outside the city centre.

Launched by Dublin City Council at the start of 2025, 24/7 cleaning crews have been dispatched around the city centre areas controlled by the Northside and Southside in a bid to improve cleanliness in the city centre.

Now, councillors from outside the city centre, namely Clontarf, Donaghmede, Stoneybatter and Glasnevin, are calling for the services to be expanded further up the Northside.

At this month’s meeting of Dublin City Council, councillors were told about the first year of the scheme, which looks to employ 100 staff and invest €8.5 million over the course of the council’s term, which expires in 2029.

As part of the plan, litter enforcement staff will be employed as part of the council’s night-time economy plans, and CCTV will be implemented to catch litterers in the act.

The meeting was told that south-east inner city residents and businesses will be banned from leaving bin bags out on the street, with the eventual aim of bringing in a similar city-wide edict

On the Northside, Dublin City Council will install waste compactors from Capel Street to Gardiner Street and Parnell Square to the Quays in early 2026.

The council plans to reopen the Slaney Road Depot to focus on Phibsborough, Stoneybatter, Smithfield, Cabra, with additional plans to roll out services to Ballymun and Finglas.

Fine Gael councillor Colm O’Rourke said, “the council has to be commended for its work; if you even go back a few years ago, the media was always reporting on the issue of litter on the streets. We have made progress, but if you still ask the average resident, they still have this perception of litter on the streets.”

The Cabra-Glasnevin councillor said that there is a loophole where businesses are able to leave rubbish outside their premises, as they don’t have a bin provided to them by the council.

He noted that takeaways, in particular, don’t fall under the bye-laws surrounding waste collection, and said that the loophole should be looked at.

O’Rourke’s Fine Gael colleague, Declan Flanagan, questioned what role CCTV will play in enforcing litter pollution.

Social Democrats councillor Jesslyn Henry said that community groups should be given a greater role in the scheme.

The Artane-Whitehall councillor said the groups “are out in all weather, litter picking, collecting leaves, planting, without these groups, Dublin city would not be the place it is.”

“They do a serious amount of our serious lifting for us week in and week out; they are the ones making Dublin city the cleaner space for us all.”

She said that bags collected by community groups take as long as two weeks to be collected by Dublin City Council.

The Soc Dems councillor noted there are 3,500 bins in Dublin City Council jurisdiction; in 2008, it was 5,000, with a population growth of 15% in that same time frame.

Sinn Féin councillor Micheál Mac Donncha said, “the city often gets bad publicity about cleanliness and so on, but there has been visible improvement.”

The Donaghmede councillor said the number and placement of bins “needs to be looked at.”

“In my own area, it’s not done on a very fair basis, very often, one or two areas seem to have more bins than others,” he noted.

Mac Donncha noted that “we very rarely hear about the aim of zero waste these days,” saying that retail and industry play a “large part” in waste in the city centre.

He said that businesses “play their part” in littering, thanks to packaging and that the issue needs to be tackled “head-on.”

Mac Donncha’s Sinn Féin colleague, Southside councillor Daithí Doolan expressed concern will the 100 extra staff sounds great in theory, he feared that those staff would only be designated to the city centre (or “the jewel in the crown”, as the Ballyfermot-Drimnagh councillor called it) at the expense of the suburbs.

“Some of the communities we represent also need the same level of attention as the city centre. People live there, pay their property tax, and how many more of that extra staff will be designated to their areas?”

Green councillor Janet Horner said, “at a systemic level, we need to focus on the level of prevention.”

The North Inner City councillor said the council should be engaging with local businesses about the level of waste they produce.

The Green councillor said the report, which was presented to council members, should be folded into existing Dublin City Council plans instead of it being its own separate thing, noting that the Planning and Mobility committee will be meeting later this month, and this is precisely the kind of issue that should be raised and pushed at a committee level.

“Citizens are really keen to see their streets cleaner, and the success of this plan is yet to be seen on the streets,” she noted.

“It’s great to see a plan in place; we are desperate to see the impact of it taking place.”

Clontarf councillor Donna Cooney said, “we need to reduce waste, but I am disappointed about the coffee cup being reversed. I think that would have been an incentive to people.”

“We want to clean up, but we don’t want to clean up resources that are just going into the incinerator,” the Green councillor said.

North Inner City councillor Christy Burke expressed bemusement that Fine Gael councillor David Coffey was praising the staff for removing 20 bags in Sandymount, yet it took three weeks for council workers to collect three bags in the North Central area.

“Communities are out there doing their bit, yet bags are being left out for two or three weeks.”

Fianna Fáil councillor Daryl Barron said there has been “great progress” on the issue since the local elections in June 2024.

The Donaghmede councillor questioned whether resources were allocated based on population, and criticised Dublin City Council for failing to communicate that Raheny was the only place in Dublin to win a gold award at this year’s Tidy Towns awards.

“That’s not good enough from a city council view; no mention whatsoever. It’s very important that we highlight the pros, as we’ve worked closely with the group.”

Barron said that the suburbs of Dublin (or in his words, “beyond the canals”) should be included in the 24-hour scheme.

“We need to be a bit more thorough in the scheme” the Fianna Fáil councillor said.

Clontarf councillor Deirdre Heney said that cleaner streets were a major part of the Fianna Fáil/Fine Gael/Green/Labour coalition, which was formed in the wake of the June 2024 local elections, and that the plan has shown signs of paying off already.

The Fianna Fáil councillor noted, “it’s nice to see things are working well in that regard.”