Rathcoole doing its bit for National Spring Clean Month when everyone is urged to declare war on litter.
The Naas Dual Carriageway has been highlighted as one of the dirtiest roads in the country. The hard shoulder, hedges and lay-bys all the way from County Kildare to Dublin are strewn with litter.
Even the golden daffodils are sharing the ditches with mature plastic creepers.
Not far away from this road is Rathcoole, and South County Dublin Litter Warden George Burrowes is impressed by the level of interest from local young people, who are helping in the spring clean up of public spaces in their community,
The children are very keen very interested in where they live and their environment. In fact they could lead the way to show the adults how to behave.
Rathcoole has a particular reason for focusing its energy on litter, as forty people will arrive this Thursday from France for a village twinning ceremony. While the village will look its best, the road that takes the visitors to it unfortunately will not.
Rathcoole Tidy Towns spokeswoman Mary Rooney says the community has appealed to local businesses along the Naas Dual Carriageway to take responsibility and for each one to keep their own patch clean, describing the current situation as
Not good enough. We're not prepared to accept it.
This month is National Spring Clean month, with 2000 events being held across the country. Litter affects us all, says Pat Oliver of An Taisce, who calls on everyone in the community to take action, starting with the most obvious litter black spots,
Let’s stop complaining for the month of April, and get out and do something positive.
Picking up litter on roadsides is one thing, but doing the same along our waterways is quite another.
With swans and ducks currently swimming alongside discarded plastic bags and bottles in Dublin’s section of Grand Canal in Dublin, the search for the organisation responsible for cleaning it took RTÉ News on a circuitous route before eventually establishing that Waterways Ireland is the body responsible.
Contract cleaners are hired, and supposed to clean these canals several times a week.
An RTÉ News report broadcast on 10 April 2000. The reporter is Carole Coleman.
