Grotesque dumping, animal cruelty and endangerment to public health.
That’s how one Carlow councillor’s summing up the discovery of animal carcasses that were discovered in a field just outside a local village.
Dead foxes with bags of household rubbish were found close to Rathvilly.
Councillor Brian O’Donoghue describes the scene for KCLR News saying “I was horrified to be shown pictures of not only household rubbish that’s dumped along the N81, a public road very close to how many thousands of cars every day, but on top of household domestic rubbish being dumped there was also at least 12 carcasses of foxes, some were mature and some were very, very young, some of them had been there a very long time and were in a very serious state of decomposition, it’s just horrifying”.
He adds “It’s a very busy stretch of road, how somebody could dump anywhere is one thing but to dump it on a national road and think it’s okay to do that is beyond me”.
Cllr Donoghue states “I don’t know how many times volunteers, members of the public and public reps like myself and others have to bring attention to illegal dumping, we’ve begged, we’ve asked, we’ve pleaded, the local authority’s spent thousands of euro every year cleaning up after dumpers and fly-tippers, we’ve increased resources in the area, beyond what should be needed really”.
He has this plea “We all know that there are people who live in our communities who are capable of doing these things and if we see it happening we just have to start reporting these people and we have to put a stop to this because dead animal carcasses lead to all kinds of run-off and that’s where the endangerment to public health comes from, where the dumping has happened is quite close to the River Slaney and it’s just unthinkable that it’s going on in 2021”.