Councils in Carlow, Kilkenny and across the country are being urged to carry out spot checks of peoples bins, and prosecute those who aren’t properly separating their waste.
The Environmental Protection Agency says local authorities aren’t doing enough to improve air or water quality, or make people properly segregate their household waste.
The organisation’s latest report shows that ten councils, including Carlow’s, achieved the required standard in 70% or more of the assessments. The other nine were Kildare, Meath, Fingal, Monaghan, Leitrim, Donegal, Cavan, Dublin City as well as Cork County and is up from five local authorities the previous year.
While Kilkenny, Wexford, Waterford and Offaly were the four local authorities to achieve the required standard in only 30% or less of their assessments.
A lack of enforcement on fixing failed septic tanks is another issue at points across the country.
Senior Manager in the Office of Environmental Enforcement in the EPA Valerie Doyle says standards are not where they should be; “In many areas we’re just not delivering on environmental outcomes such as improving water and air quality and waste segregation, overall we’re not quite at the standard we want to be and we want to ask local authorities to really prioritise and resource the environmental functions to deliver on the national environmental enforcement priorities”.
