Fingal County Council is to consider publishing images of members of the public who have been caught on camera illegally dumping rubbish in north Dublin.
If the council goes ahead with the proposal they will be following the lead of their colleagues in Dublin City Council which last month erected a poster in a litter blackspot showing 12 pictures of people who were caught on CCTV dumping rubbish on the street.
Although the move raised privacy concerns, the council said it had an instant effect on the Five Lamps area of the city centre.
“For the last 10 years we’ve had signage there warning people not to illegally dump... but this poster has made such a difference,” said public domain officer John McPartlan.
Now Fingal has said it will look at the effectiveness of the Dublin city example before deciding whether to introduce the measure in the north of the county.
Chief executive Paul Reid said: “The council will review the outcome of the Dublin City Council initiative after a reasonable period of implementation to determine if this approach should be applied in the Fingal area.
“The review will include such matters as effectiveness and data protection issues raised by the Data Protection Commissioner.”
He was responding to a question from Labour councillor Brian McDonagh, who asked him “to follow the lead of Dublin city by recording and publishing photographs of instances of suspected illegal dumping”.
Mr McDonagh said there is a problem with “systematic dumping” of household waste in certain blackspots around the county.
He said areas in Balgriffin and near the Moyne Road in Portmarnock are among particularly badly affected areas. “There’s a laneway and you see dumped rubbish and it’s definitely not casual litter we’re talking about,” he said.
He added that as soon as one person starts dumping their household waste somwehere, that location becomes a type of unofficial dumping site which in turn attracts others.
