Noeleen Herbage, a Dublin street ambassador, describes her day
I STARTED WORK as a street ambassador for the Dublin City Business Improvement District in January. Prior to that I worked in Sasha.
There are 15 of us, with seven on duty at a time. We work five days out of seven and get two weekends off a month.
I come in from Tallaght on the Luas for 9.30am. The office is a two-minute walk from O’Connell Bridge.
First up is a briefing, where we’re told of things to look out for during the day. Most of the week is spent going out to meet retailers, to see what we can do for them. They’ll maybe tell us the footpath outside their shop is uneven and that as a result people pass with their heads down and miss their window. Or it could be litter issues – maybe more bins are needed. We look out for anything that might affect footfall in their area, and we liaise with the city council to help get a rapid response to each issue.
My zone is around Talbot Street and Gardiner Street, and the retailers I deal with are lovely. They like to get the chance to give us what we call feedback and they call complaints. They also like to know they are being listened to and their complaints acted upon, such as the removal of graffiti.
Street ambassadors are a new concept here but are quite common in the US and Canada. It’s all about making an area cleaner and greener, and I can see the difference we make myself when I’m coming into work on the Luas; you get graffiti all the way to a certain point and then it stops. That’s because of us.
We street ambassadors also patrol the streets and report on what we see. Very often it’s things like overflowing bins, which we log and report. We follow up, too, to see that it has been sorted.
More than half of the litter we record is cigarette butts. Nobody thinks one butt is a big deal, but it really adds up, especially outside pubs.
We also help tourists. I just met two in a downpour who were lost, had very little English and no mobile phone, just a print-out of their hotel address. I was able to take their cases and walk them to where they needed to go.
Our uniform is blue and green high-vis gear, so people are always asking us for bus times or just stopping for a chat. Older people coming in for their messages like to have someone friendly to talk to.
Meeting and greeting people is the aspect of the job I like most. The thing I don’t like is the rain, but we do have very good shoes.
I’ve also lost 10lb since I started this job, so I don’t need to go to the gym.
** Noeleen Herbage is a Dublin street ambassador
** In conversation with Sandra O'Connell