Mullingar clean to european norms

Mullingar holds a mid-table position in the latest figures from the Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) alliance, but there’s been slippage on the part of Athlone.

Mullingar is in 23rd position of the 40 towns on the list, and is deemed “clean to European norms”.

Athlone, however, has slipped to near the bottom of the list, in 38th place, and in the “littered” category. It was previously also clean to European norms.

By contrast, Longford is top midland town on the list, occupying joint sixth, and is deemed cleaner than European norms. Tullamore also fares well, in 10th position.

Killarney was judged the cleanest town, followed by Dungarvan and Tralee.

Connecting roads between 34 towns were assessed and found to be less littered than last year.

The report on Mullingar stated: “Six out of the 10 sites surveyed in Mullingar got the top litter grade, including Market Square and Joe Dolan Statue, Mullingar Train Station (interior and exterior) and the recycle facility.

“The Canal Walk was moderately littered with much of the litter within the water. By far the most heavily littered site surveyed in Mullingar was Grove Street, which was badly let down by the litter at the pedestrian bridge.

For Athlone, the An Taisce report stated: “Despite five Grade A sites Athlone is very much towards the bottom of the league due to two Grade D and one Grade C sites – these three drag down the overall ranking significantly.

“It is quite unusual in the IBAL surveys for shopping areas to score poorly – Arcadia Retail Park and Diskin Centre were both very poor sites. Some of the better sites included Dublin Gate Street, the residential area of Willow Park and IDA Athlone Business and Technology Park.”

“Seven out of the 10 sites surveyed in Tullamore got the top litter grade and considerable improvement was noted at a couple of sites - the Harbour and Main Street were much better than previous IBAL Anti-Litter surveys.

“Scoil Iasagain has maintained clean status and Aura Sports Centre and Tesco eXtra were both well presented and maintained.”