Marathon Challenge:For Dublin City Council, the marathon involves an enormous amount of organisation and co-operation. Ronan McGreevyreports on the work behind the scenes.

For Dublin City Council's events unit, there are only two occasions in the year that come close to the scale and preparation needed for the Dublin Marathon.

The St Patrick's Day festival and the Women's Minimarathon, in particular, are bigger in terms of participation and spectators, but they are confined to an area only around the centre of the city.

The Dublin marathon involves the whole city and that brings its own logistical challenges.

For this year's marathon alone, the roadworks control unit received 38 road-closure applications along with an application for a permit for the positioning of the FM104 roadcaster.

Not only does it have to ensure that the road closures do not cause unnecessary restrictions on the day of the marathon, it also has to ensure no road works are done along the route in the days leading up to the marathon as loose chippings and building materials can be a serious hazard to participants.

While the marathon broadly follows the same route every year, there are often significant changes.

In previous years, work on the Luas saw frequent rerouting and the decision was taken this year to send the participants down O'Connell Street, and not along Capel Street as in recent years.

The last scheduled meeting between the marathon organisers and the council took place on October 10th, after which the final events-management plan was drawn up.

The marathon is a one-day event, but the planning is almost all year round.

"There are only two months of the year, March and April, when we are not involved in the marathon," says Mary McCann from the events unit.

"Even after it is finished, there is paperwork to catch up with."

The unit is responsible for organising meetings between the council and the marathon organisers and it circulates the event management plan, a map of the route and the locations of bins, road closures and the suspension of parking to other departments within the council for approval.

The events unit is the first point of contact for the Dublin marathon organisers.

As far back as January 16th, the race director, Jim Aughney, contacted the events unit with details of the new route.

In February, copies of the advertisement the marathon organisers place in athletics magazines were forwarded to the city manager and assistant city manager of the engineering department, as the council is a title sponsor.

Throughout the summer the race organisers and the council firm up on the arrangements for the route, road closures and the waste-management plan that goes along with it.

The day of the marathon starts at 2am for the council's waste-management division, which clears the entire route of rubbish - a big operation on the Monday of a bank holiday weekend.

Eight vehicles and 17 staff are then charged with ensuring the 26.2-mile route is clean and that no potentially hazardous rubbish gets in the way of the participants.

At 6am a truck delivers 36 Euro bins to pre-agreed sites, usually beside the watering stations, while another crew empties all the existing waste bins.

The clean-up operation is just as labour intensive.

At 2pm a waste freighter truck begins emptying the Euro bins and two crews fan out in the north and south city centre to clean up behind the runners, who generate eight tonnes of rubbish, most of it plastic bottles.

Another important unit involved on race day is the environmental-health section of the council.

It is involved with many aspects of health and safety, most notably ensuring there are sufficient drinking water points and toilets along the route.

The standard of facilities has improved greatly over the past number of years thanks to work done by the council's environmental-health officers and the co-operation of the event organisers.