A recent Irish Business Against Litter (IBAL) report that described the north Clare resort of Lahinch as ‘clean’, is not a true reflection of litter issues in the town.
That’s according to Lahinch resident and founder of ‘Keep Lahinch Clean’ Ollie O’ Flaherty who says “the IBAL report is not a true reflection of the problems faced here in Lahinch in terms of litter and dumping.”
Mr O’Flaherty said: “I’m a Lahinch resident nearly all of my life and I started Keep Lahinch Clean off the back of the rubbish/crowd increases in the seasonal town of Lahinch over the past decade that has been amplified even further by the holiday-local nature of travel caused by the pandemic.
There are a few main points I’d like to highlight to the writers of the IBAL report that I feel was not a true reflection of the problems faced here in Lahinch in terms of litter and dumping,” he said.
“Whenever Lahinch is hit with good weather it promotes people to flock in their thousands to our village and with that comes large volumes of rubbish. The first area of concern is the top of the cliff and the carpark area located there. Teens mostly, with some adults, flock to this area to drink and socialise but after them they leave a trail of destruction.
Broken glass, cans and all types of litter can be found there the morning after a sunny evening which could be as many as 50 to 80 days a year. We have recently collected 20 bags of rubbish from this area alone and 45 from the promenade area!! No bins and a council staff that do amazing work but are not there in enough numbers to really counteract this issue, it needs to be sorted at source where 100s of teens are allowed to congregate and destroy the cliff area,” Mr O’Flaherty added.
“Another large problem is the promenade area which on these same sunny days is over run and the bin facilities are just not enough. The council again here do a great job but sadly some of the local businesses seem to care more about profit than sending out people to help with some of the mess left on the promenade from take away containers of ice cream and fast food that sometimes don’t even come in biodegradable containers which in my opinion is unacceptable in 2021.
Sadly even the businesses who do use such containers see the purchase of these containers as a waste of time as there are no compost or recycling bins in Lahinch, just general waste which at this point in time and the crisis which we face with the state of our environment is shocking. I’d like to add that most of the businesses in Lahinch make a conscious effort but there are some stand out offenders who seem to not care less about the beauty and well-being of the village which attracts their clients in the first place,” he added.
Mr O’Flaherty said: “Keep Lahinch Clean does its best to do monthly organised clean ups, promote solo clean ups using the hashtag #keeplahinchclean and engage with the local community to take pride in our area and push for improvements in the above mentioned points. It seems to be a huge problem not in just Lahinch but nation wide and i’m hoping with groups like #keeplahinchclean that the engagement level with communities will rise and we can combat the attitudes of the messy minority.”
