Litter debate ignites in chamber

The easy answer is to put more responsibility on an already-overworked teaching community, it was suggested at April’s monthly meeting of Cavan County Council when a motion looking for a new awards system to encourage children to help with tackling the county’s growing litter problem was discussed.

A school teacher herself, Fianna Fáil’s Áine Smith said the problem with rubbish being discarded wasn’t solely with children.

Highlighting the number of schools in the county with Green Flags, she said in response to the proposal put by Sinn Féin’s Damien Brady: “I do find it frustrating as a teacher that the solution always seems to be put back on the schools.”

She said the default answer for dealing with littering was often to approach it through education.

“There is only so much teachers [can do],” she told the meeting.

School time runs from 9am to 4pm, she explained, and highlighted how in the UK school and nursery staff in some parts are being asked to supervise young children while they brush their teeth under a national programme being rolled out. It was just another example, Cllr Smith said, of educators being overstretched and taken away from actually teaching the set curriculum.

“What next?” she asked.

Her party colleague John Paul Feeley agreed.

He said that schools and teachers are being relied upon to instil responsibilities in children, and in some cases are being abdicated or outright ignored by parents at home.

“It’s an abdication of responsibility.”

It’s up to parents to teach their children to do the “right thing”, said Cllr Feeley.

He also stated that, far be it from children creating the problem, he had witnessed situations where people had travelled “considerable distance” by car to dump domestic refuse in public bins.

Since some bins had been removed from Blacklion village, the issue of litter bags appearing beside overstuffed bins had all but abated.

Fine Gael’s Winston Bennett, meanwhile, described it as a “disgrace” the act of anyone throwing rubbish out of cars into ditches.

He said it was “up to the public” to dispose of their rubbish responsibly.

Clifford Kelly (FF) said that litter is “always” going to be a problem. He agreed with Cllr Smith on her point about piling pressure on teachers.

“The problem is with people who are very uncaring, who’ll open the window of their car and just fling a bag of chips or whatever out onto the road.”

However, he welcomed the success of the Return Scheme for plastic bottles and drinks cans, saying the initiative “had helped” in reducing the number of such items discarded in hedgerows and lanes.

Director of Services Paddy Connaughton agreed with the success of the Return scheme, and said the council backed the Green Flag project, but was open to hearing from Cllr Brady on other ways to incentivise greater participation.

He said the problem with using covert CCTV is that it is problematic from a data protection/privacy point of view, but he is hopeful that “changes” are coming in that respect.

Finally, Mr Connaughton acknowledged the work done by the dozens of Tidy Towns groups throughout the county, and thanked them for their effort. “As a county we’re very grateful to them,” he said.

Responding to the comments on his motion, Cllr Brady, who was involved in a recent litter pick in his own area of Ballyconnell, was shocked by the volume of rubbish collected. He said that an awards scheme should be introduced in youth groups also.

He disagreed, however, with any suggestion that removing bins is a viable option.

Cathaoirleach T.P. O’Reilly credited young people with being more aware of environmental issues and their responsibilities than older generations. “The onus is on us all,” he said.