Galway City Council is planning to buy a drone to help its crackdown on illegal dumping.

A budget of up to €200,000 has been allocated by the Operational Development directorate at City Hall to reactivate CCTV cameras at litter blackspots in the city, and to buy a drone.

Both tools will be used for waste enforcement – to tackle litter blackspots and illegal dumping.

The move comes after a CCTV ‘oversight committee’ was formed for Galway City last year.

It hoped that once privacy issues around CCTV use can be addressed, a programme of works to reactivate CCTV will be initiated later this year.

The Council plans to buy a drone to “carry out waste surveys in difficult-to-access areas”.

The City Council’s new ‘Three Year Capital Programme 2026-2028’ has also allocated €250,000 to identify a new site and a feasibility study for a new civic amenity site that meets Environmental Protection Agency licensing criteria.

Separately, it has estimated that some €750,000 was needed for remediation works and a leachate management programme at Carrowbrowne landfill site on Headford Road.