Sir, I am beginning to wonder about the Minister for the Environment's campaign against litter. Over a year ago I wrote to Mr Howl in's secretary suggesting three practical ways in which the environment could be improved. In brief, these were to reduce the incidence of ear wrecks by making car tax on every car compulsory until the ear had been shown to be properly disposed of to forbid county councils from charging for depositing household rubbish in tip heads since the inevitable result is that much of that rubbish ends up on the side of the road instead to get Coillte to control the rubbish dumped by their sub contractors.
I got a courteous reply from Mr Howl in's office referring briefly to my suggestions and then going on in detail and enthusiastically about the litter campaign which the Minister was about to launch.
Six weeks ago I requested the Minister's office to let me know what progress they had made on the third of these items, viz, the dumping of rubbish by Coillte's sub contractors and the one that appeared to me to be the easiest to implement.
Maybe I could elaborate a little on this problem? If you walk through State forests where Coillte subcontractors have been working, your eye is affronted by oil drums, lubricating cans, half eaten meals, clothes, etc., all of which have obviously been left by cowboy subcontractors. To make it worse, some of these forests contain long distance walking routes used by foreign visitors unused to our casual attitude to rubbish. I had previously written to Coillte about this and got the usual non committal reply. Six weeks later and after one reminder I am still waiting for a reply or even an acknowledgement from the Minister's office.
The Minister seems to be not at all concerned about this problem which should be well within his control. He is not concerned about the other two problems which I outlined above. Instead he launches a campaign which is supposed to influence litter louts. These are people who think they have a God given right to drop anything they like, where they like, when they like. Their reaction to an on the spot fine (one of the Minister's bright ideas) is likely to be the same as their reaction to a proposal for an on the spot amputation, the only punishment likely to influence them.
So, in stead of concentrating on modest but achievable goals, the Minister is spending £400,000 of our money on a fruitless campaign.
Well, not exactly fruitless I'm sure the Minister will consider the publicity he gets to be worth every penny of it. Yours, etc., Meadow Grove, Dublin 16.