Mullingar clean to european standards but what can we do to improve

Mullingar climbed 20 points in the IBAL litter survey and featured at number 18 in 2014, up from 38 in 2013, making it “clean to European standards”.

The town took a severe rap on the knuckles in 2013, when it was deemed moderately dirty because of “heavy levels of litter” alongside the canal, much of it alcohol related, and wound up in 38th position.

A year later and the town has cleaned up nicely, but it has a long way to go if it is to equal its midland counterparts. Longford ranked in the top five and Tullamore is well ahead in the survey, at fifth place, making it “cleaner than European norms”.

Mullingar placed well ahead of its Lake County neighbour however, as Athlone came in at 27th place.

Conor Horgan of IBAL said 2014 had been a year of improvement for Mullingar.

“Many sites got the top litter grade but some of them were only just within that category, meaning they could easily slip to a moderately littered site, for example, Dominick Street and N4 Sligo – Mullingar link road,” he said.