An Irishman's Diary

Local authorities in Wicklow have made a bold decision to get out of the door-to-door refuse collection business. They are not the first local authority to do so and cite no fewer than 14 other local authorities which are at various stages of disengaging from the business.

According to reports, local authorities in Co Louth will be next to withdraw door-to-door collections in favour of private operators who wish to take over the business.

What was seen as a statutory compulsion - the collection of other people's rubbish - is no more. If there is an alternative service in the area the regulations allow the authorities to withdraw. And they are leaping at the opportunity.

O'Connell Street

If you want to learn a lifelong respect for the local authority refuse collectors before they become extinct, go along to O'Connell Street on a Sunday morning between 4 a.m and 5 a.m.

Here, at this time, you will find almost unbelievable filth. Whole clusters of fast-food containers swirl about in the wind. Knee-high on the kerbs, the swirling clusters are plentiful enough to slow traffic on the street. Beer cans, broken bottles, pools of vomit - and worse - line the pavements. It is so shocking it is hard not to make a plain account seem exaggerated. Truly this must be the proverbial road to hell.

But come back down O'Connell Street at 6 a.m., as I did in December, and the change is surely nothing short of incredible. An army of road-sweepers is out. Men wheel motorised green sweeping machines easily twice their size up and down the streets and a further army of men come along behind with brushes in case anything should be missed.

Once the loose refuse has been captured the street is ready to be washed. A small fleet of tankers then proceeds up and down the roads and pavements washing away the filth, leaving it clean and smelling faintly of disinfectant.

The streets once again sparkle in the lamplight. Before the hour of dawn and after the "revellers" have gone home all is gleaming, a transformation to be undone again the next night when the revellers come out to play. And when they have despoiled the streets again, the Corporation's armies will quietly come out, cleaning up.

This is the level of cleaning up after us that we expect somebody else to do. In every country town and urban village, as well as in Dublin, and in our homes.

We have constantly told the local authorities that we will make as much rubbish as we like, and that they must clear it up.

Cost? To the local authorities, to the environment, to us? Of course there is a cost, but ask us to pay for it, and witness the fury of the great middle classes who still blame litter on somebody else.

Underbelly

What sort of a people are we? In Angola, laneways off the main streets of Luanda are not as filthy as our streets. But here, exposed every Saturday night and Sunday morning is the underbelly of Irish life, the dirty linen of the information-age society.

Take yourself up to the foothills of the Dublin and Wicklow mountains. Here, among a preserved moorland landscape, you will find your path blocked by burnt-out car wrecks. Cars at the bottom of steep cliffs - presumably there were exciting sights for those who set the cars alight before pushing them, blazing, towards the edge. Cars at the bottom of hills, still on the roads, but burrowed into low stone walls.

And throughout the countryside you pass dumped mattresses, couches and chairs on the roadside. Above the weed level is the washing machine that couldn't be brought to the municipal dump, the fridge that the family couldn't be bothered to dispose of properly, the rubble which it was simply easier to feck off the back of the lorry than ferry to the dump.

Fully laden bags of rubbish regularly leap from the windows of cars. In time these bags, ripped and spilling, somehow find their way into the undergrowth at the side of the road, ensuring that any stop to admire the view or otherwise appreciate the countryside is marred by the discovery of rotting refuse, just below the weed level.

And so the local authorities have declared that they won't pick up our endless stream of filth. There is to be a new regime and that regime will hit us hard for our litter, hard in the pockets. The buck, as they say, has stopped. Our behaviour is unacceptable, either financially or environmentally.

Pilot schemes

For a short time we will be able to continue to live like slobs, but in the near distance the end is in sight. Pilot schemes have started in Cork, where waste is weighed. Quotas have been put in place in Wicklow and elsewhere. In the future certain materials which may be reused or recycled may not be accepted for landfill. £1,000 or £1,500 fines are in place for some dumping offences. Their widespread extension is being considered. The message is simple: if you are a slob it is going to go hard for you.

But one more thing. How about a fine of £1,000 for the woman who threw her cigarette butt out her car window on the Stillorgan Road, littering rather than using the ashtray with which her car had come provided? And for taxi-drivers, could we not double the fine to £2,000? Or the sack for the garda who wound down the window of his patrol car in Cuffe Street and threw out his plastic cigarette packet wrappings, along with the silver foil? Dublin Corporation's cleansing staff deserve medals.