IBAL survey highlights need for urgent action to renew inner city

5 January 2015

by Cllr Joe Costello

The annual Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) survey reveals that litter and dumping remain endemic in Dublin’s North Inner City.

The fact that the 2014 blackspot of the North Inner City has only moved down the road a couple of hundred yards to the North Wall is a mixed blessing. Now the country’s worst litter blackspot is Sheriff Street which is cheek-by-jowl with one of the most sought-after areas in the City, namely, the Dublin Docklands.

That the two most littered areas in the country are right in the heart of the capital city is a sad reflection on the approach to urban development in recent decades by the local authority and the various Government “Celtic Tiger” tax incentive schemes that focused on property rather than people.  Now with the major development of a new Technological College (DIT) in Grangegorman in Dublin 7 and with NAMA about to spend in the region of €1 billion on a new phase of Dockland development in Dublin 1, it is essential that the people of the North Inner City are not left behind again and that areas that have been allowed to become rundown are renewed.

Dublin City Council, Irish Business Against Litter, DIT and NAMA with local business and community organisations can together change the face of the Inner City.

This may well be the last opportunity to transform the North Inner City from urban decay to urban bloom.