Girl, 9, who cut foot on broken glass loses €60k claim

South Dublin County Council, which has 1,500 acres of parks and open space, could not be expected to collect illegally dumped rubbish on a daily basis, the Circuit Civil Court has been told.

John Doherty, counsel for the local authority, told Judge Terence O’Sullivan that rubbish was collected on a regular basis, sometimes within days, and there was little more the council could do apart from keeping children off recreational areas by fencing around them.

“That would defeat the very purpose of having them in the first place,” he said in a case in which the father of a nine year-old-girl unsuccessfully sued the council in a €60,000 damages case after the child injured her foot four years ago on broken glass.