From this week’s Galway City Tribune – A major overhaul of Galway’s Litter Management Plan is required to tackle the city’s worsening litter problems.

That’s according to Cllr John Connolly who said the City Council was failing to fulfil its statutory requirement to complete a review of the document which sets out how the city manages its waste.

Cllr Connolly said the current plan, which was adopted in 2019, expired at the end of 2022 and a review would present an opportunity to address its many shortcomings.

“The use of outdoor space blew up during Covid and we’re seeing increasing numbers socialising outdoors. As a result, the current plan is not fit for purpose.

“The plan we have is too generic. It’s full of statements like, ‘we’d like to do this’, but what we need is a management strategy that sets out when bins are emptied and who’s going to do it,” said Cllr Connolly.

This comes after weeks of overflowing bins as the city’s ‘solar compactor bins’ struggled to cope with crowds drawn in by the Arts Festival and huge tourist numbers.

Meanwhile, Cllr Níall McNelis said he had received confirmation this week that the Council was providing additional bins in the city for Race Week – eight 1,100 litre bins were due to be put in place on Wednesday.

However, he was informed that additional permanent bins would “go against the Litter Management Plan for the city”.

Cllr McNelis said the Council had stated that the overflowing bins were being caused by blockages in the flaps on ‘solar compactor bins’, preventing them from working correctly.
This is a shortened preview version of this story. To read the rest of the article, see the August 4 edition of the Galway City Tribune. You can support our journalism and buy a digital edition HERE.