‘Vast amounts of rubbish’ outside Wexford house as council says it hasn’t got ‘magic wand’ to make it disappear
Wexford PeopleA “vast amount of rubbish” has been left untouched outside a house in Wexford town for eight years with the local council saying it hasn’t got a “magic wand” to make it go away. Careful not to name the estate in question, Labour councillor Vicky Barron said the council’s enforcement policies left a lot to be desired.
“When people in council houses leave vast amounts of rubbish outside their premises, whose job is to enforce the clearance of it?” she asked at the May meeting of the Wexford Borough District. “This particular case has been going on for a number of years, when do we say enough is enough? People get fined for leaving bags of clothes at clothes banks but we’re not taking action on this.”
While he understood Cllr Barron’s frustrations, environmental engineer Hugh Maguire said the council was bound by legal procedure and had to follow certain steps before it could act.
“We have to give the people the opportunity to comply with our instructions and sort out the problem,” he said. “The people watching in the wings don’t always realise that there’s actions being taken because it’s subject to data protection.
“People have rights in relation to these things and it sometimes takes longer (to resolve them) than we might expect. We haven’t got a magic wand to make things go away, there’s a process.”
However, in this instance it appeared that the processes had malfunctioned as Cllr Catherine Walsh detailed the extent, and the duration, of the issue.
“There’s debris outside this house, but when I made enquiries about this 18 months ago I was told it’s not considered to be debris,” she said. “So perhaps the issue is what the council consider to be a nuisance; but the residents have been dealing with this for eight years now.”
This came as a surprise to Mr Maguire. “I’d be very concerned if it’s eight years, I’m not aware of any cases going on that long.”