Illegal dumping has cost Dublin City Council €5.2m over five years

More than 60,000 instances of illegal dumping have cost Dublin City Council more than €5.2 million to remove since 2019, according to new figures.
Data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act shows that labour, fleet and disposal costs to remove illegal disregarded waste on streets across the city from 2019 to April 2024 has cost €5,205,422.
In that same period, the council has received 61,824 reports of illegal dumping.
In the first three months of 2024 alone, €214,424 has been spent responding to 3,496 reports of illegally dumped waste.
It comes as a new plans from Dublin City Council will see CCTV cameras installed in the city’s most heavily littered area, off the North Circular Road close to Mountjoy Square, to crack down on dumping.
The cameras are to be installed from early next year on Belvedere Place, Sherrard Street Lower and Summer Street North.
Patricia, a resident in her 60s who did not wish to give her surname, lives a stone’s throw away from both Belvedere Place and Sherrard Street Lower. She described waste in the area as a “hazard”.
She stressed, however, that people from outside the area often illegally dump their waste in laneways and on streets.
“You’ll see bags on the streets [from residents] but then there are people who drive in from other areas who actually just dump it here – it’s a bit of both,” she said, adding: “You see people in BMWs driving through here and dropping bags.”
“It would reflect badly on people from Dublin 1 and it’s not necessarily all people from Dublin 1 doing it,” she says, explaining that the issue is a “mixed bag”.
Although some residents in the surrounding areas have bins, some of the houses, dating back to the Victorian period, simply do not have the space and are exempt from requiring bins. Some tenants and homeowners use council street bins and bags instead.
“Unfortunately, the Victorians and the Edwardians didn’t have the facilities for bins and didn’t think ahead,” she said.
Public bins quickly fill up, before bin bags, laid beside these bins, accumulate throughout the day, with workers routinely dropping them off as they leave in the morning, she says.
Patricia, who has lived in the area for some 30 years, said the waste attracts seagulls and other animals that spread it along the streets, though she does not believe CCTV cameras are the answer.
She has concerns over her own privacy and believes money could be better spent on more creative, proactive measures such as underground waste systems seen in mainland Europe.
“You have to think of the whole picture, it’s complex,” she said.
[ The Irish Times view on using CCTV to control illegal dumping: a move worth supportingOpens in new window ]
Nilton Junior, who runs the Point, a pizzeria on Belvedere Road near two of the three streets due to have CCTV installed, said the issue has worsened in recent months since the introduction of the Re-turn deposit return scheme.
The scheme, he said, has resulted in people opening bin bags in search of recyclable bottles and cans, spreading waste in the process.
He added that although residents without bins primarily use “proper bin bags” to leave for collection, some use open shopping bags, causing a mess. This is “frustrating” for the owner of a business directly beside a public bin.
Other residents believe the problem of illegal dumping has improved significantly in recent years, with one living on Summer Street North recalling bin bags being constantly dropped on her street and the lane behind her home of more than 50 years.
“It used to be very bad, people would just drive down and drop them in the lane behind me,” she said, adding that CCTV previously installed in the lane “didn’t work”.