Dog owners in Kilkenny City are being asked to act responsibly.
It comes as members of Kilkenny City Municipal District unanimously passed a motion at yesterday’s meeting calling on additional resources to tackle the issue dog fouling.
The local authority is also to investigate the provision of a dog park in the city.
Labour Cllr Seán Ó hArgáin, who proposed the motion says the vast majority of dog owners are responsible but for those who aren’t, better enforcement is needed…
“I’m asking people to ensure that they have enough dog bags with them when they go walking and then when they’ve picked up after their dogs to ensure that they bring it to the next bin or that they bring it home to ensure that it’s dealt with properly and that it doesn’t cause the kind of dangers that it does if people don’t look after their dog waste, leaving dog waste in park areas, in green areas or worse again on footpaths where people, for instance, using wheel chairs are pushing their wheelchairs through the waste that other people are simply too lazy to pick up.”
“I think the worst thing of all, for most of us who are dog owners, is those who pick up dog waste and then throw the red bag on the tree or on the bush in the area and that’s simply not acceptable so I’m asking for that to be enforced.”
“The minister has announced that there would be additional dog wardens and I would warmly welcome that but those dog wardens must be given better powers than they have. At the moment the dog warden has to actually physically catch the dog and their owner when the dog is in the act that needs to be changed so that people effectively can be dealt with if they are persistently abusing this.”
“The Labour councilller added that he would, “ like to have a dog park in the city-centre area and that we would have an area where dogs can run off the lead as they do in the fantastic dog park facility in Dunmore Countryside Park just out the road but that’s not accessible for many people in the city who don’t have access to transport, many of them perhaps older dog owners.”
“Naturally dogs need to be able to run off leads and it’s important that we make provision for that and also dogs need to socialise with each other, very often dogs who behave badly around other dogs do so because they simply haven’t had the experience of mixing with other dogs, it’s hugely successful in Dunmore and I’d love to see it happen in the city.”
