Over half of litter bugs fail to pay fines

Just one in five who don’t pay on-the-spot fines are pursued

Litter bugs have little to fear from the law according to figures that show fewer than half of on-the-spot fines issued by local authorities for littering are paid but only a fraction of cases are pursued.

Councils issued almost 10,000 on-the-spot fines for littering last year but, on average, just 43% of those who were caught in the act paid up the €150 penalty.

Of those who didn’t pay, just over one in five was followed up with a prosecution in the district court and, of those, only one in three was actually convicted.

That meant someone who didn’t, or couldn’t, pay the initial fine had on average only a one in 13 likelihood of being convicted in court.

Waterford City Council and Roscomon County Council had the highest compliance rates with 76% and 74% of people, respectively, paying their fines without need for recourse to the courts.

At the other end of the spectrum, Carlow County Council and Dublin City Council encountered the greatest resistance to payment with 23% and 27% of fines paid. In total, 23 of 33 local authorities had a compliance rate of under 50%.

Conor Horgan of the Irish Business Against Litter, which compiles an annual league of the most and least littered towns, said the system is not working.

“Year upon year, these statistics have shown the level of enforcement to be paltry. Our stance is that on-the-spot fines themselves will not solve the problem of littering.”

Mr Horgan said the solution lay not in going after individuals, which requires a lot of resources, but in enforcing tougher litter laws on business premises.

“A commercial premises is responsible for keeping the area outisde the premises clear of litter and real enforcement has to lie in making sure that that law is adhered to. Chasing young fellas down the street for dropping cigarette packets or fast food wrappers will never really make a difference,” Mr Horgan said.

He acknowledged that putting pressure on the business community, which is the lifeblood of a local economy, could prove difficult for local authorities, but said: “That’s really the way to keeping an entire streetscape clean. “

The success rate for prosecutions taken against commercial operators and larger scale litterers was also low. In total 1,159 prosecutions were taken last year while in the same period there were 366 convictions.

The number of full-time litter wardens per local authority ranged from none in Galway, Leitrim, and Westmeath, to 19 in Dublin City Council. There were 107 full-time and 171 part-time wardens across the country.

The availability of rubbish recycling facilities and waste recycling rates also varied widely. Leitrim had the greatest number of recycling facilities per head of population while South Dublin had the lowest.

But in Louth and South Dublin County Councils, just over 91% of household waste collected from roadsides was sent for recycling, while in Sligo, Leitrim, and Mayo, the rate was below 40%.