Council expands 24-hour cleaning as Dublin steps up anti-litter push
Dublin City Council has expanded its 24-hour street cleaning operation and recruited dozens of new staff as part of its ongoing effort to make the capital cleaner.
According to a new progress report on the Three Pillar Strategy to deliver a cleaner Dublin City, major strides have been made as 93 new cleaning staff have been hired in the past year. This brings the total staff numbers up to over 500 and has allowed services to grow from 2.75 square kilometres to 4 square kilometres across the city.
This expansion was a major goal of the cleaning strategy and saw approximately 200 staff rostered across day and night shifts each day. This ensures continuous cleaning coverage seven days a week.
Increased staff numbers have also allowed for the creation of a city-wide rapid response team that can be deployed at short notice for any incident across the city. With the establishment of city-wide wash teams, the department washes between 20 and 30km of public footpaths and pedestrianised roads each week.
Areas in the city centre with high levels of foot traffic are also washed with specialised cleaning equipment up to four times per week. These include Henry St, Mary St, O’Connell St, and Grafton St.
Further developments are planned to meet Dublin’s significant cleaning demands, which include the waste management department receiving over 30,000 service requests each year. With 3,500 bins across the city all needing emptying at least once a day, those numbers rise to three or four times per day in the city centre.
Over the next three years, more than €12 million is set to be invested in new fleet and specialised waste management vehicles to enhance Dublin's cleaning operations. These include Compact Sweepers (Multihog), Handvacs, Specialised Street Washing Vehicles both vans and compact washers, Hook and Grab Lorries.
New cycle lane sweepers and a fleet of 18 large road sweepers, with an estimated cost of €4 million, are also being planned for procurement. The aim of this is to future proof the cycle lane cleaning service for the next ten years.
Another major tenet of the Three Pillar Strategy is to deter illegal dumping across Dublin. One way this is achieved is through the removal of plastic bin bags on the city streets and the installation of compactors.
Having already been installed on Fownes Street and St Stephens Green, the new compacting service will see the removal of over 1,000 plastic bags from Dublin streets every day. The second phase of this pilot project will cover approximately 110 streets in the North Commercial area of the city and includes from Gardiner Street to Capel Street and Parnell Square to the Quays.
The recruitment of five new litter wardens since August 2025 has also allowed the Council to increase its enforcement capacity into night-time shifts. This also means a renewed focus on ensuring that businesses are complying with anti-littering bye-laws.
An estimated 3,000 to 3,500 tonnes of material are illegally dumped each year, and to address these issues the Council is expanding its CCTV surveillance in dumping hot spot areas and creating a “reverse register” to find culprits. This means the Council can find out, through Eircodes, which households have a waste collection contract and which don't.
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