VIDEO: Knotweed is a growing scourge on the environment

This is the insidious Japanese knotweed, one of the fastest-growing and most destructive of our adverse invasive plants and weeds.

It is becoming an increasingly common sight along roadways, walls, and private property, including gardens, countrywide. Forty years ago, it was relatively thinly spread but it is now out of control in many instances.

For the past three years, Kerry county councillor Michael Gleeson has been campaigning for an eradication programme in his native Killarney, which also has a national park to protect, and is now calling for co-ordinated action at national level.