CCTV cameras, due to be erected last January to catch illegal dumpers in Dublin’s north inner city, have finally been installed.
Dublin City Council last September announced plans to use CCTV to identify illegal dumpers for the first time in almost a decade. The north inner city is regularly ranked the dirtiest area in the State.
Three streets in the area were chosen as pilot locations for the scheme: Belvedere Place, Sherrard Street Lower and Summer Street North.
These streets, off the North Circular Road close to Mountjoy Square, are in Dublin’s worst litter black spot, regularly cited as the State’s dirtiest urban area by anti-litter organisation Irish Business Against Litter (Ibal).
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The council had planned to install the CCTV last January, but the project was delayed after it emerged the cameras could not be attached to existing public lighting poles, as had been planned by the waste management division.
Some cabling powering street lights also powered traffic lights, and the council’s lighting section was concerned that vandalism to the cameras could “knock out the traffic lights”, Barry Woods, the council’s head of waste management, told councillors earlier this year.
New poles have instead been erected on the three streets and have been equipped with solar-powered cameras. The cameras have been switched on in recent days and are now “fully operational”, the council said.
Signs warning that the cameras are in use for the “prevention, deterring, detection and prosecution” of illegal dumping have been attached to each pole. Illegal dumpers face fines of €150 or up to €4,000 if convicted in the District Court.
On Wednesday morning, the three streets appeared to be free of any obvious illegally-dumped bags or other significant signs of fly-tipping, although some litter had accumulated on Sherrard Street Lower in a gap between newly installed planters and the footpath.
The council used CCTV a decade ago to combat illegal dumping, with significant success achieved in reducing litter levels. In 2014, it began installing CCTV at litter black spots, mostly in the north inner city, as part of a crackdown on dumping. It subsequently erected a poster featuring 12 dumpers with their faces blurred.
However, the move aroused the attention of the Data Protection Commission, which questioned the proportionality of the scheme and the dumpers’ rights to privacy.
The commission in 2018 undertook an investigation of CCTV use by local authorities nationally and concluded that existing litter pollution and waste management law did not provide for using CCTV to identify dumpers.
New legislation, the Circular Economy and Miscellaneous Provisions Act 2022, amended the Litter Pollution Acts to allow CCTV use. The council spent two years working with various State agencies to develop a new scheme.
Data-protection impact assessments were subsequently approved for the three pilot streets. Following the north inner-city pilot, the council plans to extend CCTV to bottle and textile banks, where there is a high level of illegal dumping, before considering some suburban areas for the scheme.
