Inside the early-morning world of Galway’s street cleaners – ‘A battle that is won in the morning and lost by the evening’
It’s 4.30am on a Friday, the morning after students’ night out for Freshers week, and there is a strange pause between night and day as Galway briefly exhales. The students have long since staggered home from the pubs. Commuters have yet to shuffle towards bus stops. For an hour or two, the city is hushed.
In the mist, scraps of the night before cling stubbornly to the streets – plates, bottles, vape boxes, takeaway wrappers. By sunrise, they’ll be gone. Galway will wake to spotless streets, the debris of festivities swept away as if by magic.
But it isn’t magic. It’s the work of the city’s unseen custodians: the Litter Management Unit. A team of 11 men head out in the early hours, tasked with restoring order before delivery trucks arrive and shutters roll up on another working day.
At the heart of it is Pat McPhilbin, a man who has been walking Galway’s streets with blower in hand for 34 years. He doesn’t see the job as drudgery, or even duty. For him, it’s identity. “My heart is in the city; my DNA is in the city,” he says.
Pat is one half of a ‘pick-up duo’: one man on foot, sweeping litter out of the stubborn crevices on the street, the other close behind at the wheel of a street sweeper. Together they can clear Eyre Square’s perimeter in under half an hour before moving on to the next stretch. Smaller sweepers branch into laneways like Buttermilk Lane and around St Nicholas’ Church, while hand pickers double back for leftover litter.
As the backbone of this team, he is dedicated to walking over 10 miles a day with a blower in hand and comrade in the truck next to him. He does not see it as just a job that pays the bills but a privilege to participate in this city in such a way.
“There are no bad days, but every day is a challenge. It is a battle that is won in the morning and lost by the evening, that is the way it works.” He said.
Mr. McPhilbin talks about the first jobs he held at the corner bakery and textile colouring at a very young age. He loved to work because he saw it as an opportunity to be an active participant in the city that raised him. This job was no different.
Pat did not set out to make a career of street cleaning. A family member in Galway Corporation, now the City Council, suggested the role as a stopgap until he figured out what he wanted to do. It wasn’t an appealing job for him; at the time he thought the role would not live up to the “high places” he planned to get to he admitted.
He got the job, and took it, seeing how he would fare for a week or two. That was 34 years ago.
Over the years, Pat has had a front-row seat to the city’s transformation. In the early 1990s, health and safety were poor, rubbish often lay uncollected for weeks, and Quay Street was far from the lively Latin Quarter it is today. Back then, the team was equipped with only “a wheelbarrow, two bins, a brush, and a shovel.” Today, they have five sweepers and an 11-man unit covering the city centre and 32 housing estates.
Still, the early hours bring their own challenges. Working among late-night stragglers or people under the influence means staying alert. “My mother always told me before I left the house, ‘you never know who is going to untie your shoes’,” Pat recalls.
What might surprise outsiders is how solitary the work can feel. “It’s very lonely, it is hard to believe when you are working in the city that you get these deep, deep, deep thoughts.” Often, nostalgia rises up in the silence.
Passing the closed baby-blue Treasure Chest shop, a Galway staple that any native would be familiar with, he recalls the glow of its Christmas displays – decorations hung and the season hanging thickly in the air. “The stairs are the same stairs that were there when I was little and when I used to pass there before it was closed, when I was working, I could see myself there walking as a boy to visit Santy.” He said.
Other memories are tied to atmosphere as well. “I can go down the street and I can visualise what speaks volumes. When I am going down the street, the sun is rising, its winter, the ambience is there, you can feel it that the winter is coming.”
Today's News in 90 Seconds - September 20th
The pandemic was particularly difficult with isolation being part of everyday life, giving this team no reprieve from the silence of their own thoughts and company between work and social life. “It was the first time I was afraid of people.” Pat says.
Yet, despite the isolation, he insisted: “I have one of the best jobs in the country. I get to meet people, and I have learned a lot.”
He recalls once seeing a familiar face outside the Hardiman Hotel. “The one who wrote that musical – I think it was about cats,” he said, snapping his fingers before the name came.
The encounter was quickly brushed aside in favour of more stories about Galway. Fame might pass through, but for Pat, the city itself always matters most.
His pride is shared by his colleagues. Streetsweeper driver Kenneth Moloney, who has been with the unit for six years, says: “This job will always be here and it’s reliable. It is a good to have a job, and if you don’t love your job then what is the point?”
He says the other lads “sound” while shaking his head in a way that communicates an immense feeling of gratitude to be working with others who care about the work and about the team.
The camaraderie is matched by backing from the council. “We are working outside here, and the administration is up there. At the end of the day, we have a great connection. We are all a part of the city council… The door is always open for us; it’s a great relationship,” Pat says.
He also sees himself as a mentor to newcomers. “When I get a new driver, I embrace them, I will tell them all the good points. I am here to help you, I want you to be happy here, and I tell that to everyone. I will never get cross with my team because they are my mates and someday, I might look to them for a favour.”
Now facing retirement next year, Pat knows the transition will be hard. “It will be hard; it will be lonely.” He said, “In two weeks’ time, I will be a distant memory.”
He started a pursuit in photography at 9 years of age and since then has been awarded for his artistic eye by taking photos of poignant heritage sites in the city.
He hopes that his great love for this role, this city, and the people he has worked beside will leave a legacy of pride.
He looks forward to reclaiming weekends, browsing the Saturday market, and early Sunday mornings at the beach. “Every Sunday morning, I go down to Ballyloughane beach at 6.00am, it might be dark, with my cup of coffee, to get away from the noise. A lot goes on in the day, people calling up, constant emails, even in the evening.”
His colleague Kevin O’Brien, who has served 28 years, puts it simply: “Every day it’s a sprint, but the job is a marathon” and will continue to carry the torch for this little home we call Galway.