In an emerging crackdown on illegal dumping, thousands of households in Dublin have been found to have no obvious means of legally disposing of their waste.
The four local authorities of the capital and surrounding county are each employing similar sleuthing techniques – finding out how many households have accounts with waste-disposal companies, and subtracting them from the total number of households in their areas. Those unaccounted for are being asked to explain themselves.
For almost half a century, the issue of waste disposal has been a thorny affair, beginning with a decision by local authorities to privatise the collection of waste in the 1980s and 1990s. Now, despite ceding control to private companies, local authorities are focusing on a different kind of waste disposal – the illegal kind.
Last month, Fingal County Council in north Co Dublin wrote to approximately 4,000 homes seeking clarity on their arrangements. As part of a wider effort to tackle illegal dumping, the council collected information from authorised waste collectors to identify homes not availing of any collection service, thus creating a so-called reverse register. Similar efforts are under way, or have already been rolled out, in other districts.
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Dublin City Council (DCC), whose area is estimated to have 160,000 households, is in the process of establishing its own reverse register. The council is aiming to conclude a data-protection impact assessment within the coming weeks.
“Once this issue is resolved, the initial stage of the project will commence and will focus on the northeast inner city area and is likely to take eight to 10 months to complete,” the council said.
Dún Laoghaire Rathdown County Council (DLRCC) said its area has over 85,000 households, of which, according to the most recent data provided by waste management companies, over 65,000 have active accounts.
The council’s waste enforcement section identifies those without an account and asks them to submit proof of compliance with waste management legislation.
However, the council also noted the presence of commercial accounts that include multi-unit developments, such as apartment blocks, and as a result remains unable to clearly determine the total number of households with an active collection service.
South Dublin County Council, with more than 103,000 households, has just over 97,000 availing of a collection service, representing approximately 94% of available households.
Thanks to the passage of recent legislation, CCTV is also beginning to play its role in the war on the illegal dumping of waste.
[ Irish Times view on illegal dumping and CCTV Opens in new window ]
Last month, cameras were installed in the north inner city to monitor activity along some of the worst affected streets. In Fingal, too, cameras are expected to be rolled out on a phased basis subject to the approval of the local authority’s CCTV oversight board. This will see areas with the highest recorded levels of littering and illegal dumping prioritised.
One such black spot has been Flemington Lane on the north eastern outskirts of Balbriggan in north Co Dublin.
Eric Delahan (74), moved to the Flemington area with his family in the late 1960s, when his father got land there. In the previous decade, he grew up in a council house in Balbriggan, when waste collection was an entirely different affair.
“A man with a horse and cart would come and he would throw up the ashes on the cart and bring it to a little tip in the Bower [area of Balbriggan] and you didn’t have to pay for it,” he said.
Flemington Lane is a narrow and, in places, windy country road with fields on either side. Today illegal dumping there appears to have abated, but it has been problematic in the past.
“There have been bags of rubbish left at the gate [of the farmyard] up there. You’d often see rubbish dumped along the road … [it] would be littered with bags [and] you know what the seagulls are like,” said Delahan.
As a result he, along with some locals, “picked the road, just to clean up the place”.
“I’d love to see the throwing of rubbish on the road stopped ... the council can only do what they can do; it’s very hard to stop all this kind of dumping.”
As for Fingal’s efforts to impose the law, Delahan is conscious of those struggling with the cost of living.
“I wouldn’t like to come down hard on people who are hard pressed for cash. There are people who are at the end of their tether. But I’m sure if everyone did their fair share it would help a lot.”
[ Clearing Dublin's largest illegal dump Opens in new window ]
A recent survey of more than 4,700 sample respondents across the country, carried out by the Central Statistics Office, indicated that past year 80 per cent of households used a wheelie bin collection service to dispose of non-recyclable household waste.
Ten per cent brought this waste to a recycling centre; 5 per cent shared the bin with a neighbour, relative or friend; and 2 per cent used a prepaid bag collection service. Another 1 per cent brought their waste to work.
In Dublin, 6 per cent brought non-recyclable household waste to a recycling centre; 5 per cent shared the bin; and 5 per cent used a prepaid bag collection service.
Just 1 per cent of households across the State said they did not recycle household recyclable waste.
Local Sinn Féin Councillor Malachy Quinn said the initiative by Fingal County Council to contact households about their waste disposal was “a positive move”.
However, while not condoning illegal dumping, he feels that bin charges, in the context of cost-of-living pressures, are having an adverse effect. “Some people are struggling and this is leading them to make decisions to illegally dump,” he said.
He remembers when waste collection was carried out by local authorities, his own father among the staff, and feels local authorities should revert to that system.
“The place was clean; there was no fear of illegal dumping,” he said. “It makes sense to row back on the decisions of the 1990s [to privatise waste collection] from the point of view of the environment [and] the ordinary household.”
While privatisation has been a significant trend across Europe for many years, there is evidence of waste disposal services being brought back under direct public management over the past two decades, according to a 2023 report of the European Federation of Public Service Unions.
“I think it should go back to the local authorities,” said Philip Baker (47), another resident of Flemington Lane, who has seen the extent of the illegal dumping there.
“At the water station, there was something always dumped up there. There was a fridge and a washing machine six months ago, maybe because there is place for them to pull in,” he said.
Seeking confirmation on disposal arrangements from households is the right move, he said, but he also believes there are “people who will just dump regardless”.
Indeed, data provided by local authorities in Dublin indicates that while illegal dumping decreased during the Covid-19 pandemic, it subsequently increased.
Since 2021 there have been almost eight times as many instances of illegal dumping reported in the Dublin City Council area as in theSouth Dublin County Council district, and more than nine times as many as in Dún Laoghaire Rathdown.
Dublin city recorded just under 10,000 incidents in 2022 but that rose to over 13,000 for 2024. This year, there were already 9,000 incidents by July.
Instances in the Dún Laoghaire Rathdown and South Dublin areas are much lower, ranging from 1,000 to fewer than 2,000 annually.
[ Illegal dumping has cost Dublin City Council €5.2m over five yearsOpens in new window ]
Fingal County Council did not respond to requests to provide such information.
Then there is the cost: cleaning up illegally dumped waste in the Dublin city area, for example, cost almost €1 million in 2022, the council said. This does not take into account rubbish left alongside litter bins, and so the overall figure is likely to be much higher.
